Penn State basketball looking for momentum after round one Big Ten Tournament win

The Penn State basketball team picked up the win in round one of the Big Ten Tournament Wednesday, beating Michigan 66-57. It was not always the prettiest game, but Penn State did enough on defense to keep the Michigan offense at bay. Led by a big night from Ace Baldwin and Zach Hicks. Now the Mike Rhoades-led Nittany Lions look ahead to tonight’s matchup against Indiana.

Penn State advances past Michigan in first round of Big Ten Tournament

Penn State basketball was carried on offense by the trio of Ace Baldwin, Qudus Wahab, and Zach Hicks. Hicks was the star of the night, putting up 20 points and 6 rebounds on 6-11 shooting from downtown. He was a confident shooter, and the rest of the team made it a point to find him early and often.

Zach Hicks has been turning around his season over the past month and that continued production will be huge if Penn State wants to make a run in the Big Ten Tournament.

Qudus Wahab was a physical presence all night, scoring 13 points and grabbing 8 boards. He shot just 3-8 from the field, but he got to the line 11 times and knocked down 7 of those free throws. He was just too physically imposing for all of Michigan’s bigs and was able to establish his position inside whenever he wanted.

Ace Baldwin, like he has all year, completely controlled the game for the Nittany Lions. He finished with 17 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, 3 steals, and a block. It wasn’t the best shooting night overall for Baldwin, shooting just 5-12, but he paced the offense all game, playing 39 minutes. He was also routinely blowing up the Michigan offense at the point of attack, creating turnovers and helping to limit Michigan’s star freshman Dug McDaniel to just 7 points on 3-12 shooting. 

Nittany Lions capitalize amid sloppy game

It was a sloppy game, with both teams shooting under 40% and combining for 25 turnovers. Penn State was able to pull away because of three different areas. First, the shooting from deep, thanks to Hicks, the Nittany Lions knocked down 7 threes at a 41% clip which outpaced Michigan’s 4-18 performance from downtown.

Next, thanks to the physicality Penn State played with the Nittany Lions were able to get to the line 29 times and converted well, knocking down 23 free throws compared to just 13 for Michigan.

The final difference was capitalizing off turnovers. While both teams were sloppy on offense, only Penn State was able to turn that into offense on the other end. The Nittany Lions scored 17 points off of Michigan turnovers, compared to just 6 points of turnovers for Michigan. 

Mike Rhoades looks ahead to Indiana matchup

While the Penn State basketball team has been on a hot streak in recent weeks, so has Indiana. The Hoosiers have not lost a game since the last time they played the Nittany Lions in late February. Ahead of Thursday’s matchup with Indiana, Mike Rhoades commented on the game plan.

Rhoades stated, “I think, when you play a team multiple times, there’s always changes, counters to things you do and all that. That’s basketball. We’ll do some things differently as well. We’re not going to change, I mean with the pieces of we have and where we are at.

“There’s not a lot of things we can just change on the fly. But you make a couple of tweaks here and there to help your team. I think our style of play at this time of year helps us because, if you turn people over late in the year and you capitalize on it. it’s tough to battle that stuff and compete against that.”

This is the first time that the Penn State basketball team has swept Indiana in the regular season since 2009, and the Nittany Lions will look to build off this momentum as they try to continue this Big Ten Tournament run tonight against Indiana at 9:00 PM EST. The game will be televised on the Big Ten Network. 

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