MADISON, Wisc. — Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry put it succinctly when asked to pick out the differences between teams that win close games and teams that lose them.
“The last shot goes in,” he said.
And that is – as Penn State fell to Wisconsin in Madison at the buzzer for the second year in a row, this time to the tune of 63-60 and now 3-4 in Big Ten play – much of what close basketball games come down to. It is true that missed shots, turnovers, fouls and defensive mistakes play into the final equation of what might have been, but as Andrew Funk rose and fired twice in the final seconds of regulation, those things mattered and also didn’t. Penn State trailed by three, shot, and missed. It’s not singularly Funk’s fault, but it’s also not much more complicated than that.
Of course when the Nittany Lions watch film on Wednesday there will be a host of things to talk about and improve upon, but basketball’s very nature is more about surviving mistakes than it is avoiding them. Close games against good two good teams are a product of everyone doing just enough to hang around until the moments which decide the entire endeavor. The margins that get you to that point are more complicated, be it the offensive charge Jalen Pickett was – perhaps wrongly – called for with 53 seconds to go, the missed corner three by Camren Wynter late in the game that would have given Penn State the lead or the foul trouble Seth Lundy found himself dealing with in the game’s opening minutes. But for each thing Penn State laments there is another Wisconsin mistake that the Badgers feel fortunate to have escaped.
The game itself was much of what fans have come to expect from this Penn State team. The Nittany Lions shot the ball well enough in the first half and leaned on Jalen Pickett’s back-to-basket skillset just enough to find themselves ahead 36-30 at the break. It wasn’t always pretty, but Penn State was the steadier of the two teams and managed to find fairly balanced scoring, defense and confidence to go up on a Wisconsin team that had lost three-straight.
But for every hot shooting streak there is a cold one, and Penn State started the second half 1-for-6 from the field as Wisconsin turned a six-point deficit into a 37-36 lead with 16:33 to go and would never relinquish that lead, despite never leading by more than four the rest of the way.
In many respects the final 15 minutes of regulation were a metaphor of the entire Penn State men’s basketball experience over the last six or seven years. The Nittany Lions by most reasonable measures did not play particularly badly on Tuesday night but simultaneously could not find a way to win. There is a tendency from the knee-jerk corner of the world to look at this close loss like every loss Penn State has had. There is some truth to that, but if one considers that Wisconsin has handled Penn State in this series – historically – with relative ease – having lost the previous two games in Madison by a combined total of five points seems something of an improvement. Losing doesn’t have to be what the, but playing better and still losing doesn’t need to be an ignored nuance either.
In which lies the struggle. Penn State has played – by most objective and visual measures – pretty good basketball for the better part of the last half decade or more, it simply not won at a rate that is perhaps always a reflection of the quality of play it has manufactured [a caveat here for Penn State’s NCAA Tournament bound team just prior to the COVID-19 onset]. In some respects is a reflection of the struggles Penn State football has faced, knocking on the door of something different and better but unable to create the final 5% of required chutzpah to get over that hump. The main difference between the two being that football operates in the Top 5% of a league with very little parity while basketball exists in a league in which every team is very good all the time and Penn State is only somewhat good most of the time. Being good in Big Ten basketball does not result in the same win rate as it might in football. Probably part of the reason the seasons are so long.
Back on the court Penn State would finish having shot 44% from the field, led by Pickett’s 19 points, Funk’s 16 and Myles Dread’s 11 with supporting efforts by Camren Wynter and Evan Mahaffey. It was a well played game, mistakes or not, 10 turnovers, missed shots and missed opportunities or not, it was simply a good game. Penn State would fail to score in the final 1:55 of regulation going 0-for-4 over that span, a truth that will also haunt them on the ride back to State College.
But in and of itself, the Nittany Lions did a lot of things well. The challenge now is finding a way to do those things a bit better and bit longer in a game decided by just one basket. Consistency is the final missing puzzle piece on the nights when the margins are so small. It is especially poignant against a Wisconsin program that has often been the poster child of what Penn State can aspire to, a once irrelevant existence turned into a national power by sheer force of will and administrative backing.
“Their consistency in how they play,” Shrewsberry said of Wisconsin over the years. “No matter who is on the court or who is on their team. It’s almost like [San Antonio Spurs] they’re gonna play the same exact way. […] don’t take this the wrong way, they’ve got good players – but maybe they’re not ranked [in recruiting] as high as everybody thinks. You don’t win national championships by winning the “signing day battles” right, you find people that fit your program. You find people that you believe in you and find people who can be built up to be the best players that they can be. And that’s why they’re consistent right? That’s why produce every year. That’s why Wisconsin is consistent, they find the guys that fit them and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
