Banks' Junior Season Sours on Missed Shots

Payton Banks’ junior season did not play out as he had planned.

Entering the season as one of two key returning contributors alongside Shep Garner, Banks lived up to the role through the nonconference portion of the schedule. Starting nine of 13 games in the noncon, the California native knocked down 41.7 percent of his field goals and 40.7 percent of his 3-point attempts en route to the team’s third-highest scoring average at 12.1 points per game.

Banks’ numbers exceeded all of the same categories from the previous year while averaging three fewer minutes per outing.

The success wouldn’t last, however.

Roughly midway through the Big Ten schedule, Banks remained as the team’s third-leading scorer but saw his 3-point average dip to 39.5 percent and his overall shooting percentage fall to 39.1. At 4-6 as a team at that point, with expanding contributions from both Tony Carr and Lamar Stevens, the slight drop-offs appeared to be of little significance.

Things had changed, though. Shots that had fallen through the hoop earlier in the season would come up short or long, halfway down and pop out. The percentages dipped dramatically for Banks and with them, the Nittany Lions struggled similarly as a team.

Hitting on 88 of 225 shots to that point, Banks finished the season hitting just 18 of 69 attempts in Penn State’s final 10 games. From deep, the numbers were even worse as only 11 of 45 3-pointers went down, a percentage of just 24.4. Having nailed 62 of 157 before that point, Banks’ percentages from deep suffered a total dip of 15.1 percent.

Following Penn State’s final blow of the season, a 78-51 decimation at the hands of Michigan State in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament in Washington D.C., Banks opened up about the toll of seeing so many shots fail to hit.

“To be honest, I've gotten used to it over the years and I think it got to me these last nine, eight games. I feel a little upset because I let my team down on that aspect because they needed me to make shots and I let that affect the defensive end,” said Banks. “But, it's just something that I need to grow on and something I need to mature and get better and help the younger guys out.”

Named a captain before the start of the season, Banks also lamented that he hadn’t shown more mental fortitude.

Though he’d met with head coach Patrick Chambers and other assistants and was on the “same page,” Banks added that as the struggles began he wasn’t able to regain the consistency that he’d shown earlier in the season.

“I let that get to me and as a shooter, you kind of have to have a short memory with that. I felt like I didn't do a very good job of having that short term memory,” said Banks. “So I think that definitely got to me and it just trickled on down through the rest of the game.”

Even so, Banks is determined to see the challenges of the team’s 2016-17 campaign pay dividends moving forward.

Confident in the team’s younger pieces and his ability to improve through the offseason, his vision is an optimistic one for the future.

“I think we grew a lot. I think there's a lot of lessons that we needed to learn during this season. I feel like we learned them,” he said. “Unfortunately, it didn't pan out the way we wanted it to, but there's a lot of promise. Obviously you guys can see the young talent and me and Shep coming back, we have a lot of maturity and I feel like it's going to be a different ballgame.”