Challenged after loss, Penn State responds with dominant win

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry unleashed his frustration with pointed comments toward his team’s foundation. Dropping a blowout loss at Rutgers, his Nittany Lions were tasked with regaining what it’d lost in the process.

“We need some pride. Some prideful defenders. That’s on me,” he said. “I don’t know how I let them become this soft defensively as a team. Right now we’re in the low 80s defensively and dropping quickly. If you want to win in this league, you got to play tough. We played soft, we got our ass kicked, and ran out the door.”

Sunday afternoon, Penn State responded.

Bludgeoning Michigan, 83-61, the Nittany Lions produced one of their most efficient defensive performances of the season at the Bryce Jordan Center and, subsequently, torched the Wolverines with an offensive barrage spanning the end of the first half and the start of the second. The win improved the Nittany Lions to 14-7 on the season and 5-5 in the Big Ten.

It also assured Shrewsberry’s confidence and bond with this year’s Nittany Lions. Asking for a bounce-back effort predicated on all the toughness lacked in the loss to the Scarlett Knights, Penn State delivered, led by a masterful 25-point performance from Jalen Pickett.

“I challenged them after that game at Rutgers. But that’s what families do. They get on each other, they challenge each other, they fight, they do what they need to do,” Shrewsberry said. “But they’re still family. And there’s nobody else that I’m rolling with but these guys. So I challenged them, and they responded.”

Here’s a look at what went into the win for Penn State:

Penn State 83 – Michigan 61 – Micah Shrewsberry postgame

Sparring match

Penn State’s huge winning margin wasn’t assured in the game’s opening minutes. Rather, locked in a back-and-forth featuring on-fire performances from Jalen Pickett and Michigan’s Jett Howard, coming off an ankle injury, the Nittany Lions saw their lead fluctuate between one and eight points. 

Howard was electric, hitting tough shots (and some open), but a suffocating defensive effort against center Hunter Dickinson otherwise kept the Wolverines off balance. As a result, Howard’s 18 first-half points were offset by just four from Dickinson and accounted for more than half of the visitors’ 32 going into the locker room.

“We only forced eight turnovers, I think we only had two at halftime, but our activity and our energy, it felt like way more. And that was it. We were flying around. We were flying around defensively, we were making it tough on them,” Shrewsberry said. “I thought Jett Howard got too many open looks. We had to clean that up a little bit better. But I thought we did a great job on everybody else of shutting off what they want to do by giving them one shot.

“They got some offensive rebounds, but I think the last six minutes in the first half, they didn’t get any. And that’s when that group’s locked in. When we’re guarding like that, we’re gonna make shots. You deserve to make shots. You deserve to make plays when you guard and when you’re locked in on that end.”

Turning point

And Penn State did in the biggest way possible.

Nursing a 31-30 advantage at the 4:34 mark, Penn State transfer Mikey Henn, earning his first start as a Nittany Lion, sparked an 18-0 run. He sent home a 3-pointer to take a 34-30 lead. And, in a sequence Michigan coach Juwan Howard considered as influenced by the divine, it stood as a precursor to a wild Seth Lundy made 3-pointer.

Unloading from deep, Lundy’s attempt at the 3:25 mark hit back iron, bounced high above the backboard, fell to the front of the rim, and careened backward enough to fall through the net. Witness to an unusual make, Howard said he sensed his team was in trouble. 

“It started at the last five minutes of the first half, where when that one three bounced up, and you just see the timing of that ball. I was like, ‘Please bounce out. Let’s get the rebound.’ And it stayed up there for like, three and a half seconds if I was counting. And then it bounced in,” Howard said. “Prior to that, they had already made one three that bounced in as well. I’m like Yo, is it one of those days?”

The impending storm

It was. 

The Lundy 3 led to another Henn make from deep just 32 seconds later, prompting a Michigan timeout at 40-30 on the scoreboard. Unrelenting in its offensive attack, Penn State parlayed the momentum through the break, including a 9-0 run by Andrew Funk that included a 30-foot catch-and-shoot and an and-one exploiting Michigan’s over pursuit.

“They just went on to spiral where they just were able to feed from the energy from the crowd. I had turned to Shrewsbury, I started laughing, I’m like, ‘Yo, this is what we in right now, huh?’ And he knew it, that from passion and being around a lot of basketball and seeing how these men were competing, it worked in their favor,” Howard said. “It worked against us from there. They just went on the run and they didn’t look back.”

Defensive response

Concurrent with Penn State’s offensive barrage, the Wolverines were silenced offensively. Offset only by a Kobe Bufkin make just before the halftime buzzer, Penn State’s 17-point advantage ballooned to 32 points by the midpoint of the second half. 

A stifling defensive effort that allowed just three more points to Howard, while Dickinson remained silent, the Nittany Lions’ dominance affected both ends of the floor. By the time the dust settled, Penn State had produced a 42-11 run bridging the two halves. 

Managing the comfortable advantage the rest of the way, Michigan inserting its reserves during the home stretch, the performance was one Shrewsberry was confident could be achieved given the character he’d seen previously this season.

“I tell it how it is and I call it how I see it. I’m not gonna beat around the bush and tell them something to make them feel good or make them feel bad or whatever it might be. I’m just gonna tell them the truth. Sometimes people need the truth,” Shrewsberry said. “But I know this group, I know their character, I know their makeup, I knew how they were gonna play today. I didn’t know we were gonna win like this. But I knew they were gonna compete the right way, play the right way, and we did that on both ends of the court.”

What’s next

With the win, Penn State improved to eighth place in the updated Big Ten standings. A total of 10 teams are within two wins of each other.

Penn State returns to action Wednesday when it travels to No. 1 Purdue. The tip is set for 6:30 p.m. in a game broadcast by the BTN.