Penn State battles, overcomes Maryland in thrilling comeback

Disaster wasn’t a strong enough adjective for the Penn State men’s basketball program. Hosting Maryland in a must-win game Sunday at the Bryce Jordan Center, the Nittany Lions hoped to produce their best performance of the season in front of their home fans.

Instead, those fans bore witness to a lethargic, lifeless performance. Unable to score, or get stops, the Nittany Lions found themselves staring down the prospect of another devastating disappointment with time dwindling in the second half.

For a group of seven seniors recognized before the game, playing its final scheduled home tip of the year, the weight of aspirations, expectations, and a tiring late-season burst all converged.

“I think there’s a little bit of emotion of this being their last opportunity. Senior night, you’re going through that, it’s emotional. Even if you’ve had one before, even if you’ve done it, it’s still emotional,” head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “And you also want to play well. After Northwestern, I told those guys that our fans deserved for us to play well for how we finished the game here the last time they saw us.”

For all but a few fleeting moments in the first half, and the majority of the second, Penn State couldn’t accommodate that wish for the 10,672 who showed up. But, sparked by a buzzer-beating Jalen Pickett to close the first half, and a survival-mode battle through the first 15 minutes of the second half, the Nittany Lions provided something better.

Lifted by a Cam Wynter putback before the final buzzer, Penn State produced one of the most improbable comebacks in program history. In one of their most critical games, the Nittany Lions earned a 65-64 win over the Terrapins. 

CAM WYNTER WITH THE WINNER FOR @PennStateMBB❕❕❕ pic.twitter.com/Y0LVV4Aigc

— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) March 5, 2023

With it, Penn State improved to 10-10 in the Big Ten and 19-12 for the regular season. The Nittany Lions will play as the 10-seed in the Big Ten Tournament this week in Chicago.

To get there, they needed to push past No. 21 Maryland and the burdens of human nature.

“Maybe we were just trying too hard. Maybe we put too much on us. But also, they were good defensively,” Shrewsberry said. “We were probably too tight. Probably too tense. Even myself, I was on those officials early in the game about different things that I thought I saw. But sometimes when I do that, it rubs off on them as well. I gotta be better.”

Here is a look at how Shrewsberry and the Nittany Lions did it:

Offensive performance

Penn State jumped out to a 10-4 advantage thanks to a pair of 3-pointers from Jalen Pickett and Andrew Funk. Concurrent to Maryland shots not falling, the Nittany Lions managed to offset a 10-0 burst from the visitors to retake a 15-14 lead with 12:45 to play. 

It was Penn State’s last bucket for more than eight minutes. Struggling to make shots, or keep in check a Maryland offense that hasn’t made 3-pointers en mass this season, Penn State found itself on the losing side of a 14-0 run. The result was a 28-15 Maryland advantage and little to tout, particularly struggling with eight first-half turnovers while allowing nine second-chance points.

“They force you to play a lot of one on one. We only had three assists at halftime,” Shrewsberry said. “So maybe it just took a while.”

Pickett, who paced Penn State with 10 first-half points, provided his biggest boost at the buzzer, though. Managing a good last look with time expiring, Pickett’s made 3-pointer sent the Nittany Lions into the locker room trailing, 35-22. 

And with it, the confidence to execute an amended game plan began to emerge.

“We had to switch up our offense and our defense a little bit because things weren’t working. But I think starting off, we were trying to do a little bit of post doubles. We were doubling and they were kicking it out for threes,” Pickett said. “Sometimes you gotta adjust the game plan to different teams with different players. So coach came in, he said, ‘We need to have some more fun and put on some more smiles and we just needed to attack it a different way.’ In the second half, we just played our hearts out. And we knew that if we got it close, we felt that we had a good chance of winning it.”

Second-half spark

Penn State did get it close, and needed its full assortment of scorers to get there. 

Trading jabs out of the halftime, a Myles Dread 3-pointer at the 14:10 mark got Penn State back to a 10-point deficit. And despite back-to-back daggers from Maryland in the form of an Ian Martinez jumper and Jahmir Young 3-pointer, Penn State found its offensive spark.

Dread found the bucket on a backdoor assisted by Wynter. Funk hit in transition, and Pickett hit to get back to a single-digit deficit, 50-42. While Young continued to play, Maryland’s help dissipated, 

“We got to our spots a little bit better in the second half and forced them to help,” Shrewsberry said. “We forced them to rotate a little more and that helped us now start to swing the ball, start to spray the ball and then get it to a bunch of other guys.”

For a streaky shooting Penn State team, the flood gates were opened, Dread and Funk combining for four-straight made 3s, boosted by a fouled 3-point shot for Seth Lundy. Hitting all three free throws with less than four minutes to play, the Nittany Lions set up the game’s final sequence at 61-57

Getting stops

With shots falling, Penn State needed one more boost to complete the equation. Unable to slow down Young, the Nittany Lions would need to string together stops to complete the comeback.

“We had to dig deep a little bit and get some stops. We’re not gonna bounce back from that 12 point deficit, 10 point deficit without stringing together some stops,” Shrewsberry said. “We had to do it.”

With the crowd spurring on every stand, the Nittany Lions finally got to 62-61 with under two minutes to play on a Funk make from the corner. Reviewed as a 2-pointer, understood to be the case by Funk himself, Pickett forced a stop on Young, then turned to the other end of the floor, drew a double on the baseline, and connected with Wynter to take a 63-62 lead with 43.5 seconds to play.

Finally relenting, with Reese getting loose on a high pick and roll, an officials timeout put Penn State facing a 64-63 deficit with 19.2 seconds to play. Running a step-back 3-pointer to Lundy at the top of the key, the miss found its way into Wynter’s hands for the outback and the win.