Five takeaways from Penn State’s 65-45 road loss to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights
The Penn State Nittany Lions went on the road and struggled against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Tuesday night, falling 65-45. The Nittany Lions are now 13-7 on the season and 4-5 in the Big Ten.
Here are five takeaways from Penn State’s loss.
Nightmare offensive start
The Nittany Lions did not get much going on offense, with the ball sticking too often along the perimeter and them very rarely getting open looks from deep. They are a team that needs to generate open looks from beyond the arc to get going on offense, and that was not the case. Star guard Jalen Pickett was stuck with the ball in his hands and trying to make things happen, too often settling for long, inefficient mid-range shots.
Despite that poor start on offense, the Nittany Lions were only down 16-11 early on thanks to good defense that was only stifled by Rutgers big man Clifford Omoruyi.
Cold first-half shooting
Those deep looks that are so vital to the offense started to open up more later in the first half, but the Nittany Lions couldn’t get going. They started to get more penetration, especially when Omoruyi went to the bench, but those drive-and-kick situations weren’t as fruitful as they needed to be. Penn State made only three of its first 11 3-point attempts in the first half, with many of those misses being the kind of open looks the program is used to generating.
Those opportunities only increased as Rutgers started to more aggressively double-team Pickett, but it did not matter early on. Nothing the Nittany Lions generated seemed to fall and set the stage for a very poor first half for their offense.
Cutting it close
Penn State started making shots early in the second half and was able to hold Rutgers to more difficult looks in the half court, but the Nittany Lions couldn’t quite come the entire way back early in the second half. They kept inching closer and closer but did not manage to tie it during that stretch. The Scarlet Knights gave up some open looks to Penn State, but seemingly nothing was falling for a team that has been so good at hitting its open shots all season long.
There were opportunities to tie it, too, such as when the game was 37-34 and Pickett and Andrew Funk missed three straight attempts from beyond the arc, with all three being open.
Rutgers pulls away
Those futile attempts to tie the game eventually turned into a big lead for the Scarlet Knights in the final 10 minutes of the game. A 16-4 run by Rutgers resulted in a 55-40 lead for the Scarlet Knights and essentially ended the game. The culprits in that stretch were the same that had been all game for the Nittany Lions. They couldn’t make shots from beyond the arc, they couldn’t get easy looks around the rim thanks to Omoruyi’s presence, and ultimately they didn’t defend well enough to make up for those severe shortcomings.
That being said, the Nittany Lions didn’t necessarily defend poorly, but they did down the stretch and that all but ended the game.
Penn State stays on the seesaw
From a big-picture perspective, this is essentially the expected outcome for the Nittany Lions. Ignore the minutiae momentarily, like the team’s poor shooting, and focus on the result and this falls in line with how the results are expected to go the rest of the way. Penn State needs to win all of its home games the rest of the way and essentially steal one away game, only adding to that number if the program is unable to hold serve at home.
A win would have been nice against a very good Rutgers team, but it is not quite the same blown opportunity that the team’s last road loss, against WIsconsin, was. Now the Nittany Lions will head back home and need to beat Michigan at the Bryce Jordan Center on Sunday with little margin for error.
