Survival mode too much as Penn State suffers 69-61 loss against Purdue

Penn State and Purdue needed to survive different phases of their game Friday night in the Big Ten Tournament.

The meeting between the No. 3-seed Boilermakers and 11-seed Nittany Lions Friday night in Indianapolis required as much. A quarterfinal matchup that would send the winner into a Saturday evening date with Michigan State, the stakes were set from the jump.

Purdue, a 69-61 winner, ultimately survived. But not without Penn State firing every bit of its remaining arsenal along the way.

“They’re a good team, and trying to piece things together in your first year is hard to do, especially when everybody is new to you,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said. “You can kind of see how he strengthened our program and Penn State made a great hire. They’re difficult to go against 

“I knew the start of the game was going to be that way. We’ve had the double-bye every year and it just seems the people that get a chance to play a game, or two games, and get into that second or third game, they seem to have the advantage to start.”

Penn State sets the tone

Penn State, playing its third game in three nights, did.

Jumping out to a 12-2 lead behind a pair of Myles Dread 3-pointers, the slow starts that had defined Penn State’s wins over Minnesota and Ohio State went by the wayside. Instead, Penn State handled Purdue’s responses, repeatedly building its lead to a 9-point advantage past the midpoint of the first half.

Like the Boilermakers’ need to survive Penn State’s initial onslaught, though, the Nittany Lions faced a massive hurdle themselves. And upon the first bucket of Purdue first-team All-Big Ten wing Jaden Ivey with 7:23 left to play, that time had arrived.

What’d been a 24-15 lead quickly evaporated into a 35-31 halftime deficit. With Purdue exploding to hit nine consecutive field goal attempts, Penn State’s offense slowed to a sputter, notching just seven more points in the half’s final seven minutes.

“Probably a rookie mistake by me because we were moving the basketball, we were in a good flow, and then I forced us to be too stagnant by trying to run more ball screen stuff and get switches in the back,” Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “We did it. We had discussed it, but then the ball stuck. In the end, when we got down, we went back to playing that way. Now the ball’s moving, we were playing at a faster pace, we were getting to the rim a little better.

“I’ve got to be better. I’ve got to help those guys be better, continue to play the right way and we will.”

Final comeback falls short

Falling behind at the half, and into a deeper hole well into the second half, didn’t mean Penn State’s opportunity had passed.

Though Purdue’s seldom-used guard Brandon Newman tormented the Nittany Lions with 12 points off the bench, Penn State offered a final spurt of resistance. 

Pouring in three 3-pointers from bench guards Dallion Johnson and Jaheem Cornwall, plus a pair of John Harrar makes at the rim, the Nittany Lions found themselves trailing just 62-61 with 2:39 to play.

It’d be as close as Penn State got the rest of the way.

Closed out by an Ivey steal and fastbreak layup the other direction with less than a minute to play, Penn State saw its season come to an end.

“No matter what our record looks like, I’m proud of what we did, how we fought. When we were down, we always came back,” Shrewsberry said. “That’s going to carry on for those guys in life, that’s going to carry on in this program, that’s who I want us to be. 

“We’ll be back like I said. We’ll be back again next year. I might have some new faces, but we’ll have some old faces. I told them remember this moment, remember how it feels right now because you have to go through this to get where you want to get.”

Penn State finished at 14-17 overall for the season, missing three nonconference games in December due to COVID-19 precautions.