Penn State Basketball Continues Its Outstanding Iowa Hawkeye Impersonation

Nathan B — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:20:50 -0500

Wow, the NIT sure is looking nice right now for the Nittany Lions. Items in the rearview mirror may be far less significant than they appear.

Apparently jealous of Iowa's horrendous start with true nice-guy Mr. Lickliter at the helm, Penn State continues to try to one-up the Hawkeyes and prove that they, too, belong in the basement of the Big Ten.

Their efforts today resulted in a 63-60 loss to Tulane that wasn't as close a game as the score indicates. Tulane led by 10 with eight minutes left in the game, but PSU rallied, which itself is rather surprising, considering the Lions' final field goal percentage of 27.6.

This atrocity of a game followed on the heels of Penn State's drubbing at the hands of UNC-Wilmington. Losses to the Seahawks and Green Wave were not quite what the NIT defending champions were expecting in Charleston. In fact, there are few sports where anyone should log consecutive losses to teams named the Seahawks and Green Wave.

This is a really poor version of the Charleston Shuffle and will definitely not be remembered as a "classic" in Nittany Lion basketball lore, except for classically displaying that Talor Battle has absolutely no one on this team who can help him win.

He's also proven he's not quite ready to do it himself, turning in a 3-for-13 performance, including a paltry one-of-five from behind the arc. At least Battle makes his free throws, though (logging another eight-of-eight after last night's 11-of-12 effort).

Sophomore guard Chris Babb was invisible for the second game in a row, though not quite invisible enough, shooting one-of-six on his three-point attempts before mercifully being yanked for most of the game.

Junior forward Jeff Brooks was one of the few brighter spots for Penn State, but no one has shown enough consistency to indicate that PSU is even guaranteed of being able to beat Indiana or Iowa this year. Consider it a three-team race...for the basement.

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Penn State-UNCW: Bad Night for the Bottom of the Big Ten

Nathan B — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:56:27 -0500

This is not the way Penn State and Talor Battle envisioned their trip to Charleston.

The Lions are shuffling out of the first round of the Charleston Classic after getting blasted by a weak UNC-Wilmington squad 80-69. Worse yet, Penn State was never really in the game.

Battle attempted to carry the team, scoring 29 (eight-of-23 from the field, including two-of-nine from behind the arc and 11 of 12 from the free throw line) and playing every single minute.

Unfortunately, the team as a whole shot a miserable .323 (.268 on three-point attempts). Perhaps more foreboding, the defense gave up huge numbers to UNCW (.574 overall, .625 on three-point attempts) and lost by 11 despite having just five turnovers to the Seahawks' 15.

Penn State couldn't even outrebound the diminutive Seahawks; both teams had 30 total rebounds. UNCW had lost previous games at Appalachian State and home vs. George Washington.

The Lions will certainly hope this is just a blip on the radar after wins over Penn and Robert Morris (though those were both very close games in the first half before PSU pulled away).

Combined with Iowa's well-known woes and Indiana's generally expected loss to Ole' Miss tonight, the bottom third of the Big Ten (Northwestern included, and yes I know they've only played one game against a good opponent, and didn't perform horribly) has taken a step backwards from last year. PSU nearly made the NCAA Tournament last year; they were one of the last few left out.

Games like this will not put them in the discussion come March. They have, yet again, a rather pathetic non-conference schedule (the reason they were left out last year), the lone challenge being a home game against Virginia Tech in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

Their scheduled road game at Virginia isn't what it used to be, though they may not even be favored against the worst of the ACC after this performance.

This year, they appear to have Talor Battle—and little else. Though the scoring against Robert Morris was well-balanced, Battle has scored 27 and 29 in the last two games, getting very little support from his teammates. Chris Babb was non-existent tonight and Andrew Jones needs to step up his game as well.

Otherwise, like Indiana and Iowa (and probably Northwestern), the Nittany Lions are in for a long season.

Read more Penn State Basketball news on BleacherReport.com

Bleacher Report - Penn State Basketball

Penn State Basketball Continues Its Outstanding Iowa Hawkeye Impersonation

Penn State-UNCW: Bad Night for the Bottom of the Big Ten