Sunday Hoops Column: After Just Missing Knockout Blow, Nittany Lions Will Look to Build on Potentially Program-Altering Season

The second-hardest thing to do in basketball is to complete a huge, momentum-shifting run to erase a big deficit and take a lead late in a game against a team that is by all rights better than you.

The hardest thing to do is hold onto that lead.

Penn State pulled off the first feat Saturday in Des Moines, using a 10-0 spurt to finally push ahead of a tough Texas team it had trailed for most of the evening, then went into a stall as the second-seeded Longhorns re-established command and ended the Nittany Lions’ memorable run with a 71-66 win in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32.

After a cold offensive first half, the Nittany Lions began to see some shots fall in the second, but still trailed 55-48 with just over seven minutes to play when Myles Dread sunk a 3-pointer and was fouled. He missed the free throw but nailed another three less than a minute later to make it a one-point game. Cam Wynter gave Penn State its first lead of the half with a pair of free throws at the 5:12 mark, and Seth Lundy converted a turnover into a fast-break layup that made it 58-55 Penn State with 4:50 to play.

The Penn State bench and the blue-and-white sections of the crowd were in a full lather. The Longhorns, in control for so long if not firing on all cylinders, looked gassed. The Nittany Lions’ Cinderella story looked as though it were about to continue for at least another five days …

… and then, just as quickly as the run came, it ended.

The Nittany Lions would not score again until Wynter’s layup with 42 seconds left. In between that bucket and Lundy’s, they missed four threes and one two and had two turnovers, including an inexplicable backcourt violation on an inbound pass, and Texas had ripped off 10 unanswered points to go back in front by seven. Penn State pressed and pushed the pace and got a 4-point play from Lundy but by that point, the math was already well in Texas’ favor.

Two nights after playing arguably their most complete game of the season, a defensive clinic that also included 13 3-pointers in a comfortable upset of No. 7 seed Texas A&M, the Nittany Lions didn’t have their fastball and had little control over their breaking stuff. Jalen Pickett coughed up the ball an uncharacteristic seven times, missed several shots from short range and had to sub offense-defense late in the game after picking up his fourth personal foul with just under six minutes left. Lundy and Andrew Funk, who both had inspiring second halves, were both scoreless in the first 20 minutes. A team that had so brilliantly shared the ball had only one first-half assist and finished the game with only six. The run Penn State made to take the lead showed everything that made the Nittany Lions such a dangerous opponent these last few weeks, but even slightly better play in the 33 minutes prior to that might have helped them pull out a win even with the collapse in the final five.

Texas, of course, had a lot to do with that. The Longhorns made everything difficult for Penn State’s offense in the first half with disciplined, relentless D and, despite a brutal display of long-range shooting (they finished 1-of-13 from three), found a groove in the paint, shooting 10-footers over shorter defenders or finishing at the cup. This was the most complete team Penn State faced this season, and if it didn’t perform at its highest level for 40 minutes, it was close enough for most of the game to more than earn the win.

That is little consolation for a Penn State team that had seemingly found the perfect feedback loop of limitless self-belief, steely resilience and spurts of smart, effective basketball during the past month, but the Lions have nothing to be ashamed of even after a mostly sluggish finale. The team that walked off the floor in Des Moines bore little resemblance to the group that had lost four straight games to open February. Micah Shrewsberry, often seen frantically motioning his players into position from the sideline like an orchestra conductor, deserves a huge part of the credit for that and whatever raise the Penn State administration is able to pony up, but more of that credit should go to the players themselves, from Pickett, Funk and Lundy to Dread and Wynter to Kanye Clary, Evan Mahaffey, Michael Henn and Kebba Njie. They achieved what every team hopes to achieve regardless of its talent level—they rounded into their best form at the exact best time, and what a run it resulted in. Wherever Penn State basketball goes from here, theirs was a season to be remembered and savored, and any lingering what-ifs should not overshadow what this group did accomplish: The second Big Ten tournament final in program history. The first NCAA berth since 2011. The first NCAA win since 2001.

In just a few weeks’ time, Shrewsberry and the Nittany Lions erased a lot of long-standing historical deficits, putting Penn State on a basketball stage that had eluded it for so long. That wasn’t as easy as they made it look. Holding onto that momentum, and getting back to that stage on a regular basis, will be the truly hard part.