Penn State men’s basketball loses to 22-point underdog Bucknell. What coach Mike Rhoades said
Penn State men’s basketball was upset despite being a heavy favorite against Bucknell on Saturday afternoon in the Bryce Jordan Center. The Nittany Lions’ 76-67 defeat was the first one to a team outside the KenPom top 300 since Ken Pomeroy began his website in 1999.
Heading into Saturday’s contest, Bucknell was ranked No. 330 out of 362 teams, while Penn State sat at No. 100. The Nittany Lions were favored between 21.5 and 22.5 points, based on multiple online sportsbooks.
The loss is Penn State’s fourth straight after starting the season 4-0 and drops the program to 4-4 on the year with two conference games — against Maryland and Ohio State — coming up next. The three previous defeats came in Florida as part of the ESPN Events Invitational. This was the first loss that happened at the Bryce Jordan Center.
Here’s what Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades had to say after the loss.
On the step back from its four wins
“I just think we’re in a rut. We’re in a rut. And I think we tried to shake it up and we were really fighting the game; we’re playing frustrated. We’re not as connected as maybe we first were. We’ve dealt with some adversity. We’ve dealt with some stuff that has affected our program. We’ve dealt with some stuff on the road, going down (to Florida) and having adversity and not dealing with it the right way.
“And that can snowball, and that’s where we’re at right now. That’s where we’re at right now. Let’s call it as it is. This is not good enough. It’s on me, number one. I’m not pointing fingers, it’s on me. But I also know that when you’re dealing with failure, you’ve got to fight through it together. And you just can’t make excuses. You’ve gotta fix things, you’ve gotta change things, you’ve gotta find ways to connect with the guys. The guys gotta connect with each other, then we gotta find a way to, when we do have adversity and things don’t go our way, to get better. But you’re exactly right. We’re not playing the way I think we’re capable of playing. But we’re not taking a week off here, we’ve got work to do.”
On how much of the struggles are mental
“Without a doubt. We still have holes with our games at times and light in some spots and all that stuff, but that’s how it goes. Everyone deals with it. But we’re just not as connected as we were earlier on because we’ve gotten beaten up. Let’s find out our true character. Some of it is, I’ve got to spend a lot of time with these guys and work them through that. The other part is they’ve got to take on personal responsibility and team responsibility to say, ‘Hey let’s work on this together.’ And that’s the beauty of building a team and building a program. But you’ve got to go through this stuff. It just hurts and it’s embarrassing and it stinks. But, no excuses, gotta find a way.”
On the team’s energy level
“I’m not making excuses. Not good enough. It’s just not good enough. Some of it is going through adversity and everyone deals with it differently. But we’ve gotta attack it and we’ve gotta be together. I just think guys are getting frustrated at their own games and it’s affecting other things, like our defense. We’ve just gotta continue to mature. Call it out, right? Call it out, not blame, but call it out to improve.
“The No. 1 thing when you have failure is to own it, is to understand it, learn from it so it makes you better. We’re not doing that well enough right now, and that’s on me. No excuses. We’ve gotta understand that when we have a bad play, you can’t be disengaged, or you can’t have less energy, it’s the other way around. You’ve gotta go through all that stuff to learn that and mature from it. But that standard is not good enough for me right now. But that’s on me, man. I’ve gotta teach these guys to figure out how to deal with that in the heat of the moment, too.”
On if the team has players that bring enough energy
“When they’re playing well. When they’re playing well, yes. We see that. Even in Florida there were moments where guys were playing well and gave great juice to other guys. But it’s gotta be the guy that might not be playing great individually but he’s still giving juice to everybody. And when you’re in this rut that we are right now, you can question it. But when you do that, that’s when you’re disengaged.
“We just gotta keep battling. We gotta keep battling. I know what I signed up for. I still think we can win every game, that’s my mentality. But we’ve got a lot of work to do and we just can’t make excuses. We can’t make excuses. We can’t play the blame game. We can’t listen to the noise. We’ve just gotta stick together and keep fighting. You win your next one, now it’s a little different. And if you don’t, you gotta keep grinding. Because I’ve been through this before at other programs that I took over. Yeah, it’s hard. But these are the days that you become very proud of. The days of failure are the ones that teach you and learn to push you toward success.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2023 at 3:56 PM.
