Alarming trend emerges for Penn State basketball after Palestra loss

Penn State basketball fell 77-71 on Sunday at The Palestra to Indiana. The loss dealt a severe blow to the Nittany Lions’ NCAA Tournament hopes after being projected to be in the field as a No. 10 seed heading into the matchup.

Now, Mike Rhoades’s squad will need to regroup and get back on track against three straight top-16 opponents. But to find a way back into the win column over the next week, the Nittany Lions will need to reverse an increasingly concerning trend from behind the arc.

Three-point shooting sinks the Nittany Lions

Penn State shot an abysmal 3-21 (14.3%) from three on Sunday against Indiana. Compared with the Hoosiers’ 9-23 (39.1%) from deep, the inconsistency from long-rang was clearly one of the contributing factors to the loss.

The Nittany Lions shot 0-10 in the first half; it took until 6:45 left in the game for the first three-pointer of the afternoon to go down. Penn State cut the lead to 73-71 with several more successful attempts from three. But as fate would have it, a Zach Hicks miss with 1:11 remaining ended up being the deciding shot late.

However, the issue stems beyond Sunday’s contest – Penn State has struggled in recent games to get anything going from deep. Against Northwestern, the Nittany Lions went 4-15 (26.7%) from deep but were bailed out with 45 attempts from the line and squeaked out the 84-80 victory. In the last non-conference game of the season against Penn, the team shot 4-18 (22.2%) but overwhelmed the 4-8 Quakers for an 86-66 win. The Nittany Lions emerged from the Wells Fargo Center earlier in December with a 75-64 win despite a 3-14 performance from behind the arc.

As a team, Penn State is shooting 34% on the season. That ranks No. 173 out of 364 teams at the NCAA Division I level. The Nittany Lions rank No. 242 with 21.6 attempts per game but are only making 7.3 of those shots on average, good for No. 221 nationally.

Penn State basketball staring down a monumental week

© Matthew O’Haren-Imagn Images

In the last four games, Penn State basketball has shot 14-68 (20.6%) from three, an alarming trend for Mike Rhoades as conference play heats up with three highly ranked opponents over the next week.

Over the next eight days, the Nittany Lions play at No. 13 Illinois, vs. No. 15 Oregon, and at No. 16 Michigan State. A stretch that would be tough at any point in the season, poor shooting will certainly not help Rhoades and company in two hostile road environments.

After a promising start to Big Ten play highlighted by an upset of then-No. 8 Purdue, the Nittany Lions are now staring at a potential 2-5 conference recording heading into January 20’s home matchup with Rutgers. Penn State basketball needs to win at least one of these next three games to stay in the middle of the pack in the conference standings and keep the hopes of making an expanded Big Ten Tournament field alive.

NCAA Tournament hopes can be back in the cards with a quick turnaround

Many bracketologists projected Penn State basketball into the NCAA Tournament field heading into Sunday’s matchup with Indiana. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and others had the Nittany Lions as a No. 10 seed and safely off the bubble thanks to their No. 38 NET ranking.

But with Indiana’s No. 62 NET ranking and the fact that the contest at The Palestra was considered a home game for Penn State, the defeat technically classifies as a Quad 2 loss. The loss dropped Penn State basketball 10 spots to No. 48 in the NET. Bracketologist.com now has the Nittany Lions as one of the first four teams out of the NCAA Tournament. It is the first time this season that the NET has put Rhoades’s team outside the field.

However, there’s ample opportunity for the Nittany Lions to return to the postseason conversation. With five of the next six games against Quad 1 opponents, a mid-January course correction can quickly propel Mike Rhoades and Penn State basketball back into the Dance.

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