Penn State basketball begins Big Ten Tournament play against Minnesota | Preview, prediction
The postseason begins for Penn State Nittany Lions basketball on Wednesday evening.
The 11th-seeded Nittany Lions take on 14th-seeded Minnesota to begin the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis. The game begins at approximately 8:30 p.m. on the Big Ten Network.
Penn State narrowly missed out on a first-round bye this week after falling 59-58 at Rutgers to conclude the regular season. Should the Nittany Lions squeeze by the Gophers, they’ll take on Ohio State on Thursday evening.
“There’s no real pressure,” head coach Micah Shrewsberry said Monday. “Some people are coming into this thing — and it’s pressure. Like, we have to win. We have pressure [that] we don’t want our season to end, but you also get an opportunity to just go play and see if we can piece it together at the right moments.”
Scouting the Gophers
There’s no shortage of information for the Nittany Lions to draw from here.
Penn State took on Minnesota twice this season, experiencing two very different outcomes. On February 12, the Nittany Lions lost 76-70 in Minneapolis. Shrewsberry called it one of his team’s worst defensive performances of the season.
Five days later, Penn State turned in one of its best, smacking the Gophers 67-46 at the Bryce Jordan Center — PSU’s largest margin of victory this season.
“It’s kind of fresh in your mind in terms of what you need to do,” Shrewsberry said. “You can look at their Northwestern game from [Sunday] night or Maryland the other night, but your two games are so fresh that that’s what you go back to watch more than anything else.
“Here’s how we attacked each other. Here’s how we tried to guard each other. What worked? What didn’t?”
Minnesota closed the regular season on a four-game losing streak, falling in six of its final seven Big Ten games.
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Also under a first-year head coach in Ben Johnson, the Gophers offer a bit of a contrasting image to Shrewsberry’s efforts in year one.
Offense isn’t the problem for Johnson’s Minnesota team. But the Gophers struggle mightily on defense, with the second-worst defensive unit in the Big Ten according to KenPom. The Nittany Lions have the Big Ten’s worst offense, but can rely on their defensive tenacity to stay in games.
Junior forward Jamison Battle leads the Gophers with 17.4 points per game, followed closely by guard Payton Willis with an average of 16.1 points per contest.
Shrewsberry cautioned that Minnesota’s role players can all have big nights, too. The Nittany Lions found that out in Minneapolis, where light-scoring big man Eric Curry decided the game with his 22-point night.
“They’re such an offensive-minded group,” Shrewsberry said. “You have to be at your best defensively.”
Penn State vs Minnesota Prediction
Penn State 68, Minnesota 61.
Both of these teams ride losing streaks into Indy, but the Nittany Lions can build on two positive performances on the road, while the Gophers have just lost by double digits to Northwestern and Maryland. The Gophers lack a true rim protector to deal with Penn State’s pick-and-roll offense. Penn State should be fine offensively, and while the Gophers certainly have some talented scorers, the Nittany Lions have shut down better offenses than theirs this season.
