Three takeaways from Penn State basketball's loss to No. 19 Michigan State

Penn State basketball found itself overmatched on Saturday, suffering an 80-64 loss to Michigan State at the Breslin Center.

The Spartans gained most of their ground in the final 10:45 of the first half, outscoring the Nittany Lions 23-13 within that stretch as they netted transition basket after transition basket.

With the loss, Penn State falls to 5-5 and 0-2 in the Big Ten.

“When you’re playing a good team, you have to be ready for the fight right away,” Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “And it took us a little bit of time to get into the fight.”

1. Transition game kills Penn State’s chances

The Nittany Lions have succeeded at times in bogging games down against opponents with more explosive talent.

They didn’t on Saturday.

Michigan State got out on the break on every opportunity. After makes, after misses — it didn’t matter, the Spartans ran.

Michigan State outscored the Nittany Lions 31-3 on fastbreak points, getting easy looks at the rim time after time down the floor.

The Nittany Lions adjusted somewhat in the second half after the hosts potted 20 fastbreak points in the first 20 minutes, but the impact was already made.

“The way they pushed the ball in transition, those were things that we talked about, those were things that we emphasized,” Shrewsberry said. “You can’t take the first few minutes of the game and get adjusted to that.”

The transition offense came despite a solid job by the Nittany Lions in the ball security department. Penn State turned it over only seven times — certainly a number Shrewsberry can be content with.

Regardless, Michigan State ran Penn State ragged, ensuring the Nittany Lions never truly applied any game pressure down the stretch.

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“We were back but we weren’t set the way we needed to be set,” Shrewsberry said. “We weren’t communicating in the back line the way we needed to communicate. And we weren’t building walls.

“[Michigan State guard] Tyson Walker turned the corner a couple of times for layups when they’ve got four guys on the court. They usually have a guy taking the ball out or rebounding so he’s way behind the play.”

2. Spartan length makes it difficult on PSU shooters

Penn State started 0-10 shooting from beyond the arc in this game — certainly not a recipe for beating a ranked opponent on the road.

The Nittany Lions saved face slightly late in the game, eventually connecting on five of their 20 triples. Still, that wasn’t nearly enough to get the job done.

Shrewsberry attributed some of Penn State’s shooting difficulty to the length of Michigan State’s wing players.

“Gabe Brown is 6-8 and really long arms,” Shrewsberry said. “Max Christie the same way. Malik Hall and Joey Houser are both big, so you’re shooting over a high hand at every contest.”

3. Forward Greg Lee makes Nittany Lion debut

Some good news for Penn State fans in this game came in the form of Western Michigan transfer Greg Lee.

The 6-foot-9 forward came off the bench to make his Nittany Lion debut, having missed Penn State’s first nine games due to a lower body injury.

Lee played 15 minutes on the afternoon, scoring five points on 2-6 shooting, while grabbing a pair of rebounds and contributing one assist.

“It’s just good to have him back,” Shrewsberry said. “He still hasn’t practiced a lot. It’s hard to ask him to do a whole lot. We just wanted to give him a little bit of minutes here and there to try and get his conditioning back.

“He helps us. He gives us another guy we can put out there physically. Offensively and defensively he’ll be able to do some good things for us.”