City of Basketball Love

Vincent Lungaro (@VinceLungaro)

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Following an exhausting triple overtime defeat to Indiana on Wednesday, Penn State looked sluggish and were noticeably a step slower than normal in Saturday’s game against Rutgers.

A hallmark of Pat Chambers led teams throughout his coaching career, particularly in his six seasons with the Nittany Lions, is their ability to outwork their opponents.

That wasn’t the case against the Scarlet Knights, who used 15 offensive rebounds and 17 second chance points to pace them to a 70-68 win.

The Nittany Lions drop to 12-12 on the season (4-7, Big Ten), while the Scarlet Knights improve to 13-11 (2-9, Big Ten).

“We didn’t have enough juice, we didn’t have enough energy,” Chambers said. “You need that to compete for 40 minutes in the Big Ten. You can’t show up in the last three minutes and finally start playing. We’ve got to do a better job.”

Getting beat in the rebounding department has become a worrying trend for the Nittany Lions, who have seen opponents hold a 213 to 141 advantage on the glass over the past five games.

During that stretch the Nittany Lions have gone 1-4 and now dip back down into the bottom portion of the Big Ten standings. This difficult stretch follows a bright start to the conference slate, which saw Penn State begin 3-3.

“We have to get back to work,”  Penn State junior guard Shep Garner said about how the team can respond from this difficult period in the season. “We have to wake up tomorrow, get back in the gym and also watch some film. Work on our weaknesses.”

Numerous times, the Scarlet Knights shot the ball and drew iron, and numerous times one of their players was the first one to pounce on the loose ball ahead of a Nittany Lions player.

In a game decided by just two points, those second chance opportunities came back to haunt Penn State.

“It’s all a want,” Chambers said of the rebounding struggles. “I watched Ross Travis do it for four years. I watched Brandon Taylor do it. It’s a want, it’s a desire. We need that fight. We have to understand when we win the rebounding battle we’re going to win.”

Chambers even had to take a gamble by keeping Roman Catholic product Lamar Stevens in the game midway through the second half with four fouls, to try and cope with the rebounding struggles.

The gamble didn’t pay off, as Stevens picked up his fifth foul of the game with over seven minutes to go on a charge call.

“It’s big to lose a key guy on the team with so much time left in the game,” Stevens' classmate and high school teammate Tony Carr said. “[Stevens] is one of our best rebounders and one of our better scorers. It was big. It definitely took a toll on us.”   

The problem for the Nittany Lions in recent weeks hasn’t been so much finding a body once the shot goes in the air, it’s more down to the fact they don’t release the opponent their boxing out quick enough to go and snatch the ball for a rebound.

Coming off of that marathon loss to the Hoosiers, Chambers said he gave the team an off day on Thursday in the hopes it would help prevent heavy legs against the Scarlet Knights.

Shooting 27 percent from the field in the opening 20 minutes and having not really threatened the Scarlet Knights’ lead until the game's final few minutes, it seemed the residual effects of what happened in Bloomington lingered still with the youthful Nittany Lions.

“You can’t think about the past,” Chambers said. “It’s a like a reliever in baseball. You give up a home run and you’ve got to look toward the next play, next day, next game, next practice. That’s what it’s got to be and we didn’t have that today.”

One of the few players who didn’t seem affected by the aftermath of Wednesday’s loss was Garner, who poured in a team-high 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting, including six 3-pointers.

In the early stages of the game, with his teammates struggling to find their footing offensively, Garner kept the Nittany Lions in the game and they trailed only by six at halftime.

Unfortunately for Penn State, Garner’s effort and determination didn’t catch on with the rest of the team until the latter stages of the game, when the Nittany Lions’ comeback attempt fell short on a Carr missed layup that bounced off the backboard at the buzzer.

“You can’t sulk. You can’t feel sorry for yourself about what happened in Indiana,” Chambers said. “You have to move on. And did not do a good job of that. And that falls on me. I have to talk to our leaders, talk to our entire team, about how to compete and how to get back up.”