Fatigued Nittany Lions beat up by Purdue, 73-52, in return to BJC

In an ideal performance against Purdue, one of the Big Ten’s best teams again this season, Penn State interim head coach Jim Ferry said his Nittany Lions would concentrate on a few key areas.

Defensively, the Nittany Lions would need to front the post with the Boilermakers featuring pounding big men Treyvion Williams and Zach Edey, while switching everything on the perimeter. Mixing up blitzes to the post to pull Williams off-balance could complement the effort on that end of the floor, he added.

Offensively, meanwhile, the Nittany Lions would need to play with pace and tempo, Ferry said, quickly moving Purdue’s defense from side to side instead of settling for contested shots, while playing off drive-and-kicks.

In Penn State’s most lopsided loss of the season, a 73-52 decision at the Bryce Jordan Center, none of those things came to fruition.

“You gotta give Purdue a lot of credit. They looked fresh. They were flying around the court today. I thought they set the tone defensively,” Ferry said. “We struggled with everything. I thought we looked a little fatigued right at the start of the game. We made a run back at them, but the two times we had the runs that we came back, I just thought we looked gassed. We never could get over the hump.”

The contrast in physicality was evident almost immediately.

While the Nittany Lions were able to build a 6-2 lead in the game’s first two minutes, Purdue grabbed the lead and never let go the rest of the way with 14:25 left to play in the first half. The Boilermakers, well-rested following a six-day layoff after topping Nebraska on Saturday, Feb. 20, dominated the hosts in the paint on both ends of the floor, flatly stifled the Nittany Lions’ perimeter shooting, and made easy work of careless first-half turnovers. Penn State, meanwhile, appeared very much the team that'd played Ohio State, at Iowa, and at Nebraska, all in the previous seven days.

Unable to produce any type of counterjab to Purdue’s relentless pressure in the paint (40-26), and perimeter defense (6 of 29 from three), the Nittany Lions fell behind 41-26 at the half, and couldn’t cut their deficit past 9-points at the 17:51 mark in the second before falling completely off a cliff. Rocked by a 15-2 run in the early stages after the break, Ferry said his team was left without answers.

“When your team is built the way it is, especially this team, we're a little undersized, we have to play with quickness, we got to spread you out and play off of drive and kicks. We don't have Treyvion Williams to throw the ball to inside, so we have to create offense off each other, for each other,” Ferry said, rejecting the premise of a question suggesting Penn State’s 52 point output was indicative of the team’s offensive performance for the season. “If I'm correct, I think we just scored 86 points the other day. We've been scoring, it's just a game like today, I give them credit defensively.

“And again, I thought a lot of it tonight, it looked like we were running in quicksand. We have different sets to kind of get touches inside and try to do different things, but your team is built the way it's built.”

Trailing 58-36 with 13:18 left to play, then, the Nittany Lions managed a final 5-0 spurt to cross the midpoint of the second half. By that point, the Boilermakers kept Penn State at bay, including an infusion of reserves from both sides, the rest of the way, their lead fluctuating between 17 and 21 points until the final whistle.

With only two scheduled games remaining this season ahead of the Big Ten Tournament on March 10 in Indianapolis, facing Minnesota for Senior Night at the BJC on Wednesday, March 3, then traveling to Maryland on Sunday, March 7, Ferry said his priority now would be to restore his team’s energy heading into the home stretch of games.

“We haven't played like this all year. I’m just disappointed, disappointed for the guys,” Ferry said. “I think we got to get a little bit more rest here before the stretch run.”

With the loss, the Nittany Lions fell to 8-13 for the season and 5-12 against Big Ten opponents, currently holding the 12-seed in the conference.

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