Penn State comes up empty at Wisconsin in bruising Big Ten tilt

Before stepping foot on the team plane, Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry knew what awaited his Nittany Lions. Facing a Wisconsin team coming off three-straight losses, Penn State would have its hands full against a traditional Big Ten stalwart.

In a building Penn State had never won in, the challenge of the trip to the Kohl Center was magnified that much more.

“We’re gonna go into a buzzsaw tomorrow night,” Shrewsberry said Monday. “Every place you go, the coaches are great, the atmosphere is great, and you gotta step your game up in this league this year. Me, our players, our fans. Everybody’s got step their game up.” 

Tuesday night in Madison, the Nittany Lions couldn’t quite do so. 

Battling the Badgers in a bruising, physical matchup, Penn State lost a 63-60 decision. It was the latest Nittany Lions’ loss at the Kohl Center in 19 tries, keeping them winless all-time in the venue and winless in Madison dating back to 1995.

With the loss, Penn State drops to 12-6 overall for the season and 3-4 against Big Ten opponents. 

Along the way, the Nittany Lions faced a multitude of challenges. They included a rash of foul trouble to starters, uncharacteristic turnovers, and lingering struggles to build on a first-half lead.

Here’s what happened:

First-half opportunity

Balanced scoring and a spark from freshman wing Evan Mahaffey helped lift the Nittany Lions in the first half. Locked in a back-and-forth battle that saw the Nittany Lions and Badgers trade leads, two fouls to Seth Lundy and Cam Wynter called on extra duty from Penn State’s reserves.

They delivered. 

With Mahaffey pouring in six points in a three minute stretch late in the first half, Penn State built up a 36-30 lead going into the locker room. 

The performance, one in which the Nittany Lions overcame a handful of missed opportunities at the rim and empty trips offensively, still prompted a call to action on Wisconsin’s bench. Having connected on 5-of-9 shots from deep, Penn State was set to face a Badger team determined to be more physical in the second half.

“We had to. We had no choice. And we had to find a way to shut off the threes and still stop Pickett from getting to the rim,” Wisconsin coach Greg Gard told the BTN. “Our guys battled. It wasn’t pretty all the time.”

Second-half battle

That impetus took shape as an intensified defensive grind to open the second half. Quickly racking up foul calls, Lundy landing his third on a loose ball scrum and Kebba Njie following it shortly after, the Nittany Lions reached seven team fouls by the 9:03 mark in the second half. 

Having already surrendered the halftime lead on the back of a 8-0 Wisconsin run before the first media timeout, the Nittany Lions stayed within striking distance. Still, unable to climb a hill that never exceeded a 4-point advantage for the Badgers, Penn State found itself trading shot for shot in the game’s final 10 minutes to stay within a bucket down the stretch.

A Myles Dread 3-pointer in the corner, responding to a make from deep from Connor Essegian on the other end, left the Nittany Lions at 61-60 with 2:38 left to play.

They wouldn’t score again. Unable to get to the free throw line and crippled by a crucial charge called against Jalen Pickett with 53 seconds left to play, Penn State had no answers.

Penn State officiating frustrations resurface

Fresh off a sequence at the Palestra in Philadelphia in which Shrewsberry was vocally critical of officiating, earning a technical in the process, the Nittany Lions’ head coach was measured in his postgame comments to the media in Madison.

But, when asked by a reporter to identify what separates teams who come out on the winning end of close games and those who don’t, Shrewsberry acknowledged the reality of the situation for the Nittany Lions regarding officiating in this game.

“The last shot goes in. I don’t know what more else we could have done. We got stops down the stretch,” Shrewsberry said. “I guess the thing, we shouldn’t have fouled early in half and got them in the bonus for so long. But they went for the longest time without a field goal down the stretch. So, we guarded and I thought we got good looks offensively.”

Two of those looks included final minute 3-point attempts for Andrew Funk. His first came with nine seconds to play. After Wisconsin free throws, the second would come as time expired. Missing the first, an immediate foul on the rebound sent Wisconsin to the free throw line where Chucky Hepburn buried both. 

Last look

Taking a final look off a side inbounds with just 4.7 seconds left to play, Funk again was the shooter. Again finding space from four feet past the arc, the grad transfer couldn’t connect as time expired.

Satisfied by those looks, though, Shrewsberry maintained that the charge call against Pickett, and another minutes earlier tagged to Mahaffey, meant empty possessions and lost opportunities to surmount Wisconsin’s lead on both occasions.

“The biggest thing that upsets me is those two charges were probably the biggest plays in the game,” Shrewsberry said. “We play off two feet, we jump straight up, you’re getting a layup or you’re getting a kick out three. We don’t. They take charges. Now they’re going down on the other end. We get nothing out of those when those possessions were good stuff was happening for us.”

Penn State returns to action for the season’s only conference home game on a Saturday at the Bryce Jordan Center. The Nittany Lions will host Nebraska at 2:15 p.m. The game will air on the BTN.