By Kevin Wesley
It was ugly at the start, a string of four turnovers on their first four possessions hinting at the Lady Lions’ nerves. Ranked for the first time in more than a year, and hosting a conference rival with the Big Ten lead in the balance, Penn State on Thursday looked like a team that, at least initially, wasn’t ready for the occasion.
Forty minutes of basketball did little to change that impression.
Plagued by turnovers and unable to get their high-octane offense in gear, the Lady Lions lost for the first time in three weeks and just the third time since New Year’s, dropping a 60-49 decision to No. 11 Michigan State. It was the lowest scoring output of the season for Penn State (20-6, 9-3), which came in averaging a Big Ten-best 80.4 points per game. The win moved the Spartans (21-3, 9-2) into sole possession of first place in the conference.
The Lady Lions had earned a spot in the national rankings—No. 23 this week, thanks to wins in eight of their previous nine games—on the strength of some of the best young talent in the nation. Behind gun-slinging freshman Maggie Lucas and sophomores Alex Bentley, Mia Nickson and Nikki Greene, Penn State has out-run and out-classed most opponents this season. For third-year head coach Coquese Washington, this young core has been largely terrific and bodes awfully well for the future. But against a Spartan squad that starts three seniors and two juniors, Washington acknowledged that experience won the night.
“They played like players that have been in this type of game, on the road, a lot,” Washington said of the Spartans. “It didn’t matter what was going on, they maintained their composure. They’ve been in this position a lot, and they played like it.”
For Washington, “this position” equated to an NCAA tournament game—two ranked teams with ample talent and high expectations, separated by a dozen spots in the rankings and polar opposite styles. Michigan State came in with the Big Ten’s stingiest scoring defense, giving up just 55.1 points per game. “We knew coming in, it was going to be a battle of pace,” Washington said.
That battle never went Penn State’s way. The Lady Lions needed more than three minutes to get on the board, and those four early turnovers foreshadowed a game in which they gave the ball away 24 times. By contrast, they finished with just 17 field goals.
Penn State led just once, 9-7, on a three-pointer by Lucas, who leads the Lady Lions in scoring despite coming off the bench. Her quick, fluid release is a thing of beauty, and when she gets an open look it’s as if she couldn’t possibly miss. But she finished with 15 points on just six of 15 shooting on the night, an inefficiency typical on a night when only Nickson—six of 12 from the floor and 10 of 11 from the foul line for a team-high 22 points—was a consistent offensive threat. On the night, the Lady Lions shot just 26 percent in the first half and 33 percent overall.
The culprits? Michigan State was active and aggressive on defense, forcing a lot of those two dozen turnovers and helping hold the Lady Lions to just 52 field-goal attempts, 13 below their average. But a lot of those turnovers and wasted possessions were down to unforced errors, bad passes and careless traveling calls that, in Washington’s opinion, exposed her players’ inexperience in a way it hadn’t been all season.
“I think our kids came in ready to play—they might’ve been too ready to play,” the coach said. “They might’ve been too hyped for this game. When you’re over-emotional, that can impact your ability to do what you want to do. We probably wound ourselves a little too tight.”
That certainly would’ve explained the slow start, and maybe also the midgame scoring drought, in which Penn State went scoreless over the final 6:19 of the first half and scored just three points in the first five minutes of the second half. The Spartans led by as many as 18 midway through the second, and while the Lady Lions managed a run of their own and cut the deficit to six, 51-45, with 4:23 left, Michigan State’s quality shone as the Spartans held on.
The takeaway? Simply, the Lady Lions played terribly and lost to the only team above them in the Big Ten standings. No shame in that, and no sign of a repeat of last year’s late-season swoon, when the team followed a 15-4 start by losing eight of its final nine conference games, plummeting out of the top 25 and out of NCAA tournament contention. This team, with its talented sophomore and junior classes a year savvier, and the freshman Bentley scoring at will, shows no signs of a similar fate.
Even the coach doesn’t sound worried.
“We haven’t lost two games in a row all season,” Washington said.
Three years in, Washington has this program climbing back to national relevance faster than Penn State fans had a right to expect. If she’s that confident about her team’s short-term future, one can only imagine where she expects the Lady Lions to be two years from now. Until then, she’ll claim it as a learning experience. Before long, these will be the games Penn State expects—and knows how—to win.
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