Time was moving, but as Cam Wynter grabbed a rebound and lofted it skywards with .5 seconds left in regulation, it felt as though time was also standing still.
And then it wasn’t. Then there was chaos. Cheers, hugs, tears, an explosion of noise that reverberated throughout the cavernous Bryce Jordan Center. Penn State had won, 65-64 over No. 21 Maryland, completing a 16-point comeback and potentially sending the Nittany Lions to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in over a decade.
Down in the details, Penn State’s tournament future is still tentatively optimistic, the Nittany Lions generally projected to be among the final four teams to make the field. As such, Penn State will need to avoid a bad loss in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament and hope that conference tournaments around the country don’t result in too many unexpected teams winning automatic bids.
But that will be sorted out officially in a week’s time. For now Penn State will enjoy the moment for what it is, the avoidance of heartbreak. The Nittany Lions have spent the better part of forever coming up just short in many of the program’s biggest moments. The marquee wins, NIT titles and unexpected upsets the high-water marks within a decade of “what if” moments. The popular notion Penn State men’s basketball isn’t any good often ignores a lot of good basketball to have been played over the past six or seven season, even if many of those seasons have been peppered with ugly and forgettable outings better programs avoid at a higher rate.
But as former head coach Pat Chambers was fond of saying, “they earned the right to make those shots.”
Which is the only way to explain why the ball found its way to Wynter as he made his second winning shot in as many games. That ball could have bounced anywhere, it could have ended up out of bounds or in a Maryland player’s hands. And yet nobody really covered Wynter, nobody got a body on Penn State’s transfer portal find. Nobody can explain why the ball found Wynter’s hands, but it did. If Penn State basketball is cursed to being less than it might desire, Sunday’s bounce was the reward for continuing to try. A positive attitude indeed.
Of course Penn State did not make winning easy in the first half of Sunday’s contest, falling behind 35-22 at the break, a Jalen Pickett heave at the buzzer getting the Nittany Lions into the 20s after spending the better part of the final 10 minutes of the opening half missing everything. Maryland for its part, found balanced offense and interior scoring to go with stout perimeter defense. Nothing was going Penn State’s way.
In truth not much went Penn State’s way in the second half either, for each Nittany Lion basket, Maryland had an answer. For all the defensive woes Penn State may have had at times, the Terps were equally adept at making tough shots. It was perpetually a 10-point game. If Penn State was going to miss out on the NCAA Tournament it would be fitting if it had happened in a game where the Nittany Lions were close and yet so far.
Down by 11 with 5:08 to go there was little reason to think this was going to change. But then Andrew Funk make a three, and then Myles Dread did. A 6-0 run in just 42 seconds. In the final four minutes Penn State would go on an 11-3 run, and yet even with all the good, Julian Reese floated through the air and laid home a shot with 19 seconds to go to give Maryland a one-point lead.
So close, and yet so far.
Except not this time. Seth Lundy’s missed three eventually found Wynter who crashed the glass unimpeded, laying home a shot as time nearly expired. It was remarkable, the comeback unexpected, the win sorely needed. Penn State players jumped, celebrated and cried. Senior Myles Dread emotional at center court, a career spent coming up just short, a season that he would have like to have back, but a result he has longed for his entire life. Dread’s 11 points a crucial contribution in the season’s biggest game of the year and his final moments in the Bryce Jordan Center. Dread has seen three head coaches, heartbreaking losses and an NCAA Tournament appearance robbed from him by virtue of COVID-19. And in the 11th hour it finally fell into place.
At his side Andrew Funk finished with 14 while Jalen Pickett’s 16 points were as crucial as his obligatory seven assists and seven rebounds. It wasn’t always pretty, in fact most of Sunday was ugly.
But as Penn State cried, cheered, shouted and hugged, it was beautiful in its own right too. Penn State baseball may never be a well oiled machine, but there’s something a bit more romantic about the programs that have to fight and claw for everything and watch a lot of it taken away. It makes those moments when it all comes together that much more rewarding to see. Everyone might want the problems of an elite college basketball program, but somewhere in all the wires, metal and circuitry the humanity gets lost.
So enjoy it Penn State fans. Maybe it took longer than you might have liked, but it arrived all the same.
