Penn State shakes off lethargy to top St. Francis, 92-62

Coming out of a second comfortable win in as many tries, Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades pointed out the obvious. Winners in back-to-back games with scoring outputs of more than 100 points each, his Nittany Lions would see greater challenges moving forward.

“When the ball is hot and everybody’s getting a piece of it, I think that creates confidence, and you start seeing that ball. When guys share the ball and you go from good shots to great shots, the rim gets bigger, the hoop gets bigger. They can see that,” said Rhoades. “There’s a joy to this team the way they play. We need adversity. We need some games coming up that are going to create some adversity.”

Tuesday night at the Bryce Jordan Center, Rhoades and the Nittany Lions got one.

Hosting St. Francis (Pa.), a program located just an hour away from State College, Pa., in nearby Loretto, Penn State was met with its most difficult test of the young 2024-25 season. Locked in a competitive battle in the first half, the Nittany Lions used their depth and versatility to earn a comfortable, 92-62 win.

Only after grinding through a first half in which the Nittany Lions built an 11-0 lead in the first two minutes, gradually ceding ground until St. Francis took a 34-33 lead with 2:17 left to play. With the Red Flashes taking advantage of Yanic Konan Niederhauser’s foul trouble and sinking six first-half 3-pointers against Penn State’s scrambling defense, the crowd of 6,626 at the BJC saw a closer game than anticipated.

“Credit to St Francis. They came in here and they weren’t spooked at all,” said Rhoades. “They play really hard, but they’re very disciplined, and they play within themselves no matter who they play against. We gave up too many threes in the first half to get them some juice, and then we weren’t flying around.”

Pushing the boards

In Konan Niederhauser’s time spent on the bench, the Nittany Lions partially turned to power forward Kachi Nzeh to fill the five spot, as well as Puff Johnson. The senior forward led the Nittany Lions with 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting from the floor, but also pitched in with three rebounds and four steals while manning the cneter position. He also hit a team-high 3-of-4 3-pointers in the performance.

But, Rhoades insisted that his side’s rebounding effort wasn’t up to the level he believed possible at every spot on the floor.

“I want Kachi to get those minutes. If you get two fouls early, you’re not ready to play and you’re not locked in, maybe you’re not ready to go back with that for the third one. We got to get Kachi reps in minutes and Miles will be back. That will help us tremendously,” said Rhoades. “Puff was a warrior today, not just because he scored, but he battled and all that stuff. So we might have to play small with him and Nick and Zach and scrap out rebounds.

“We’re not rebounding well enough. We’re giving up too many extra shots and not getting clean rebounds.s so we could run even more and maybe I’m nitpicking. We scored 92 points, and we ran a lot today. But we got to rebound better. We got to rebound better. And that’s at the front of our minds.”

Adjustment period

With senior Ace Baldwin’s body language out of sorts from a first half in which he scored 12 points but was charged with three turnovers, two on lobs to teammates that weren’t finished, Penn State sorted out its defensive letdowns in the locker room. Regrouping, with Konan Niederhauser back on the floor for 16 minutes in the second half, the Nittany Lions found the rhythm they’d been lacking on both ends of the floor.

“We made some adjustments. We needed some adversity, and we had it today. And some of our guys did a good job of handling and some of our guys didn’t,” said Rhoades. “We got to grow and get better from it. But I thought the second half we responded, held them to 24 points and 18 percent from three. And I thought we did a good job in the second half of guarding without fouling, creating the deflections that led to steals and got our offense going.

“So, we got to play better. Now we move up to a couple more weight classes, which is great, and in the next 40 days until we go into Christmas break is an awesome stretch for us to really improve and play some awesome games and find out where we’re at and where we can go.”

With the win, the Nittany Lions improved to 3-0 on the season. They’ll leave the BJC for the first time this year when they take on Virginia Tech on Friday night in Baltimore as part of the Hall of Fame Series at CFG Bank Arena (7:30 p.m., Peacock).

Penn State 92 – St. Francis 62 box score

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