Penn State overcomes 'incredible' play, human nature in Iowa upset

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry was doing the math.

Surrendering a season-high 86 points to Iowa Monday night, Shrewsberry could have taken issue with the defensive effort. That it came in a thrilling, double-overtime, 90-86 win for his Nittany Lions made the arithmetic a little more generous toward his side, though. 

Forced into overtime by an improbable, game-tying tip-in from Keegan Murray with 0.1 seconds remaining in regulation, Shrewsberry was willing to call it what it was. 

“It was only 66. It was really 64, and Keegan Murray makes a miraculous tip. That was unbelievable,” Shrewsberry said, grinning. “I guess since the game’s over now, I can go back and talk about it. But that’s why he’s going to be playing in the N-B-A next year.”

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Had the outcome played out differently, the sequence might have more closely resembled a mortal wound. 

In a venue that has been full of them for Penn State men’s basketball, it started with a Sam Sessom’s bucket to take a 65-59 lead with 1:11 left to play in regulation. Immediately offset by a Murray 3-pointer on the other side, the Nittany Lions suddenly found themselves leading just 65-64 when Patrick McCaffery sent home an easy basket with 13 seconds remaining. 

Not yet in the bonus, two successive Iowa fouls finally sent Sessoms to the free-throw line with 8.4 seconds with an opportunity to secure a 3-point advantage. Connecting on the front-end, Sessoms’ miss on the second set up a court-spanning, game-winning 3-point look for Jordan Bohannon. 

Defended tightly by Jalen Pickett beyond-the-arc, Bohannon’s release sent the ball high arching and, ultimately, well short of the rim as the clock raced toward triple zeroes.

Iowa’s Fran McCaffery, a basketball lifer with 26 years of coaching experience, described the stakes of Bohannon’s shot. 

“You’re thinking, OK, if it goes in, we win. If it misses, we lose,” McCaffery said. “That’s what you’re thinking when it left J-Bo’s hands. But to not give up on the play and then have the wherewithal under the basket and tip it back in, what a great play that was. I was really proud of him.

“That’s one of the most incredible plays I’ve ever seen.”

From his vantage on the other end of the BJC hardwood, Shrewsberry said he knew the contested play’s outcome immediately.

Reviewed by the officiating crew as Iowa’s bench celebrated the shot, Shrewsberry instead focused his team’s energies on a more worthwhile endeavor. Needing to recover to have any chance at winning a game it had possibly lost astonishingly, Penn State’s priorities quickly became clear.

“The first thing was trying to get all of our guys back to the huddle,” Shrewsberry said. “I knew that ball was in. I saw it go off his hands before the horn went off. 

“But you can’t put your head down in that moment. Right? You can’t be thinking about what happened during that moment. You have to regroup as fast as possible. So we had to get into the (huddle) and start talking right away about ‘Hey, we got to win this overtime. We won the game. And this tip-in happened. We didn’t finish the job, but we won the game. Now go win it twice then. Do what you need to do to win it twice.’”

Easier said than done, Shrewsberry acknowledged.

Needing to overcome more than a Hawkeyes outfit that had eaten Penn State’s lunch nine days ago in Iowa City, the Nittany Lions also were tasked with tackling human nature. 

“You can’t do that if you’re thinking, I didn’t box out. You can’t do that if you’re thinking, Hey, he didn’t box out. We would have won this game,” Shrewsberry said. “Now you’re not focused on doing your job and trying to get our guys refocused. I thought they did that.”

Citing a response that saw his team fall behind after losing the opening tip of each of two overtimes, Shrewsberry saw a pattern emerge. 

With Iowa leading throughout much of the first overtime, Penn State fought back at every turn. Be it a Seth Lundy 3-pointer, a Myles Dread 3-pointer to tie it at 78-78, Sessoms’ lay-in to extend a lead in the second overtime, or Dread’s four made free throws to ice it, the Nittany Lions repeatedly hung in.

“We kind of chipped away. We hung around, we scored back and forth, and the same thing in the second overtime,” Shrewsberry said. “I thought we responded at every opportunity to match their scoring in overtime. When they scored, we came down and score. They scored, we came down and scored. 

“And that was us just regrouping in the huddles, talking. We got great leadership from our guys to stay focused and do what we needed to do to try and win the game.”

Managing to overcome a fantastic play by an opponent that won’t soon be forgotten, Penn State did.