Penn State basketball’s losses have always been conflated into program referendums. A close loss an indictment on the coaching staff, a blowout defeat was proof of lacking talent. Every loss meant something sweeping, something grand and important.
If Penn State’s surge into national relevance has changed anything, it’s what a loss means.
Because sometimes losses don’t really mean anything, sometimes you just lose.
And as Penn State saw its eight-game wining streak snapped to by Illinois 62-56 on Tuesday night it was a reminder of that. It was a reminder that no matter how good Penn State’s defense might be, it can still get torched by one of the most NBA-ready scorers in the Big Ten.
It was a reminder that eventually Penn State was going to lose with Myreon Jones sidelined for a fourth-straight game in a conference that is as deep as it has ever been. It was a reminder that Illinois won seven-straight games in Big Ten play earlier this season and that the gap between No. 9 and unranked is not always what it might seem.
It was a reminder that when a team wins eight-straight games that eventually all those shots don’t fall, all those bounces don’t go your way. Sports is a marathon of trying to put off the day you finally lose until tomorrow and then trying to put it off again.
But for nearly every team to play nearly any sport, eventually the rent is due. Eventually you can’t put it off any longer.
Of course the inevitability of defeat doesn’t mean losses are not without consequences or cause. Penn State will lose a step in the Big Ten title race, it will have to get some help from Maryland’s opponents to get back on that particular track. It will fall in the rankings, it will probably stumble in some magical algorithm that predicts NCAA Tournament seeding.
It will also play Sunday on the road against Indiana.
In the meanwhile the Nittany Lions will look to improve their rebounding, an area of strength over the past eight games but not a strength over the broad scope of the season. They will look to find its shot beyond the arc, making just four on Tuesday night after a streak of shooting the lights out over the past handful of games. In the back of their head they will hope that their weaknesses, which have been masked but not entirely erased, don’t show up again over the next month or so.
Myles Dread will look to recapture his consistency, Lamar Stevens will look to find space to operate. The Nittany Lions on the whole will try and track down the swagger that they had just a few days prior.
‘If we do lose, we want to know we played our best basketball,’ Dread said. ‘We didn’t play our best basketball.’
They will hope that Myreon Jones can shake off an illness that Penn State isn’t at the liberty to disclose but certainly appears to have all the hallmarks of Mono or something of that ilk. They will hope that a bench one-player shorter won’t remind them of years past, where depth was not the strength it has become in 2019-20.
With five regular season games to go and at least one Big Ten Tournament game to play, there is a lot of basketball left to play with a lot of things left to play for.
The Nittany Lions will head into tomorrow regretting that their streak did not extend to nine games, but they will also head into that same day knowing a different truth as well.
Every loss hurts, but not every loss means all is lost.
‘I’ve been here a long time,’ Chambers said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice when asked if there was any silver-lining to the conference’s longest winning-streak, and the accompanying pressure, ending. ‘I was really enjoying it.’
‘But now we can start a new one.’
