For a brief moment DJ Newbill was the only Penn State player visible on the Bryce Jordan Center scoreboard as he surveyed the four immediate defenders in front of him.
There were 10 players on the floor, but for those few seconds it was Newbill against the world. A bit of symbolism for a player who has done more than his fair share of the work over the opening eight games of the season.
With a few exceptions, it’s something of a tradition for the best player on Penn State’s team to experience the inescapable feeling that he has to do it all. Newbill has become the latest to hold up that tradition which in its own way has turned him into perhaps the best pure scorer the program has ever had.
But if the Pat Chambers era is going to be successful it will be because he was able to improve the supporting cast around his marquee players. Chambers doesn’t need to turn Penn State into Kentucky to succeed, he just needs to find the next Newbills, Fraziers or Battles and continue to improve the players that fill out the rest of the roster.
Some of that — in theory — has already been happening on the recruiting trail. Unfortunately for fans, those reinforcements aren’t here yet.
And so ugly wins over teams like Virginia Tech are an opportunity to reverse the ideology that Penn State can’t put together a capable and deep roster. With a Hokie defense that was very happy to pester and double team Newbill, it gave Penn State the chance rely on others.
Even with his considerable skills, Newbill can only do so much. Two straight games with Newbill struggling in the first half is evidence enough of this.
Last Friday against a feisty Bucknell squad Penn State got the scoring it needed from Ross Travis with 12 first half points coupled with 8 from rising freshman Shep Garner and a 10 point combination from Brandon Taylor and John Johnson. Newbill on the other hand, was held to only 7 points in the opening 20 minutes.
On Wednesday night the focus was even more intense with the kind of pressure Newbill will see from defenses in the Big Ten. The Hokies clogged passing lanes and fought over, under and around screens — seemingly attached to Newbill’s hip.
And again it was left up to Penn State’s secondary scorers to do the job. So while Newbill was held to 5 points in the half, Penn State got 9 from Garner, and 10 from the combined efforts of Taylor and Travis.
In both cases the secondary scoring was all Penn State needed before Newbill was able to find his shots in the second half. While he has scored just 12 points in the first half of the last two games, he has found 34 points in the combined 40 minutes of second half play. How long teams in the Big Ten can contain him will be a question left to the future.
“I’m glad we were put in that situation,” Chambers said on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you that. D.J. needs to understand that’s what coaches are going to do to him and he needs to let the game come to him and find ways. We have to put him in different situations and move him around. That’s what we tried to do.
“But, other guys need to be ready to step up and make plays. Brandon Taylor got in foul trouble and that hurt us a little bit. I thought Shep [Garner] carried us in the first half. He has to continue to do that. But we need John [Johnson] and Geno [Thorpe] and Donovon [Jack] and Jordan [Dickerson]. Those guys need to step up and they will. They have to step up and make open shots because they had a lot of open shots.”
That feeling was echoed nearly word for word by Newbill.
“It is good for us now because during the Big Ten, we are going to need a lot of guys to step up,” Newbill said. “You need 14 guys in the Big Ten. It is good for confidence, going out there and making big plays and taking shots or making big shots. So it is just a confidence builder for us.”
The entire situation is perhaps best summarized by the fact that Newbill leads the nation in total scoring and is third in points per game. The two rankings illustrate, not only his individual talent which Penn State has rightly leaned on, but also the growing need for him to score at a high level on a regular basis.
Conversely, Wisconsin big man and maybe the Big Ten’s best player in Frank Kaminsky averages an effective 16 points a contest. Aside from the obvious differences between the two players, Kaminsky’s numbers reflect that he’s the best player on his team but one who isn’t required to carry the load on his own. Newbill’s figures have — to this point — been almost a prerequisite for winning.
If Penn State’s supporting cast can continue to improve and if one or two Nittany Lions can upgrade to something of a 1b and 1c scoring option behind Newbill it will go a long way to making winning a lot easier. With two players already averaging double figures those kinds of options aren’t far off.
The Nittany Lions are 7-1 because they’ve played solid basketball, but if Wednesday night was a glimpse of what Penn State looks like when Newbill “struggles” there is still a lot of work to be done.
The good news though, for the first time in a long time, Penn State has options and options that should eventually give Newbill the support he needs to make the 2014-15 season something positive.
“I think our guys are poised under pressure,” Chambers said. “They understand late-game situations. We work on situations almost every day in practice. I think this is really going to help us when we get to the Big Ten. Like we did last year, we put ourselves in position to win and we just didn’t get it done. This year we’re getting it done. We have to continue to do that and continue to work on it.”
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