Jalen Pickett says playing for Big Ten Championship is 'really special'

Penn State star Jalen Pickett has been the bell cow of the Nittany Lions from the beginning of the season all the way into the Big Ten Tournament. His play in the postseason hasn’t dropped off either.

Against Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals Saturday, Pickett was the best player on the floor.

He scored 28 points, grabbed eight rebounds and dished out four assists as Penn State continued its Cinderella run as the No. 10 seed to the Big Ten Championship Game. Pickett was 9 of 19 from the field and 9-for-10 from the free throw line.

Pickett and the Nittany Lions now face Purdue in the title game Sunday, an opportunity Pickett is not taking for granted.

“It’s really special,” Pickett said after the Indiana win. “We felt like throughout the whole year we’ve seen guys putting in work, and we all talked about what kind of team we can be when we’re all on the same page and we’re all playing together. To be standing here right now in this moment is kind of refreshing, but it kind of makes us more hungry because we want to go out and finish what we started.”

Jalen Pickett not only one excited for Big Ten Championship Game

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry was hired about two years ago from Purdue, where he was the associate head coach. He also served as an assistant for Purdue from 2011-2013.

His ties the program and the state of Indiana run deep and Boilermakers head coach Matt Painter has been an extremely important person in his career.

The opportunity to play him and Purdue for the title is not something that is lost on him.

“It’s never fun because they beat our brains in every single time we’ve played them,” Shrewsberry said. “But like it’s the friendliest of rivalries that he’s a guy that I call and I talk to all the time, and despite us being in the same league, we’re talking about things throughout the year. We’re helping each other. He’s helping me.

“So I’m always indebted to him. I owe a lot of gratitude to him. He showed me, in my years there, how to run a college basketball program, how to do it the right way, how to recruit the kids that fit your system. So it’s fun. It will be a great challenge. We got to be ready. We got to be physical. We got to play good offense.”