Michigan State was 7-3 in Big Ten play before it hosted Penn State last night, and they’ve won each of those games by at least 10 points. Not a whole lot of people thought the Nittany Lions would account for the Spartan’s fourth B1G loss – they had a chance to be. Not a whole lot of people thought PSU would be Sparty’s first B1G casualty to come within 10 – they almost were.
Most people thought that when the Lions headed to East Lansing, they would get destroyed by a Spartan team that’s one game out of first place in the conference. And by the time the final horn sounded, the 77-57 MSU win gave us pretty much what we expected.
Penn State was able to compete for stretches here and there but the inexperience of the Lions showed when it got down to crunch time. Jermaine Marshall hit a huge jumper at 9:13 of the second half to pull the Lions with five points but from that point on, Penn State finished the game by shooting 4-14 form the field and getting outscored 25-10. They just couldn’t hang.
PSU held Sparty without a field goal for the first five minutes (the Lions didn’t score either so…), then within the next 10 minutes, Michigan State had built a 25-8 lead before going into halftime up 33-19.
As usual, Tim Frazier was the main reason the Lions were able to manage even 19 points to open the game – he scored 10 of them. Frazier finished the game with 19 points and 7 assists and 5 boards…but his game-high six turnovers didn’t help much.
Marshall was the only other Lion to finish in double digits with 12, but most of his work didn’t come until the second half. About five minutes into the final 20 minutes, Penn State went on an insane 22-5 run in which Marshall scored five-straight points, drained a three, and then ended the run when he cut PSU’s deficit to 52-47.
It was all down hill from there, thanks to Sparty’s Draymond Green, you can catch him in the Association next year. He hit a layup on the ensuing possession and then went on to score 10 points to bury the Lions. He finished the game recording his 13th double-double with 23 points and 12 rebounds.
Penn State did show signs of life, which is a very good thing with such a young team playing against such a solid MSUÂ team. The Lions really need to get their defense figured out – something they haven’t done since Ed D was there – and they really need to get their shooting up. They’re 2-10 in B1G play and are shooting 37%; they shot 38% last night but they really need to get above 40% if they’re going to come close to anybody with their defense.
The Nittany Lions’ next two games are both at home and they’re both extremely winnable. They get a rematch against 11-12 Nebraska on Saturday and a chance at redemption Feb. 16 after the embarrassment in Iowa, so they need to come out fired up if they don’t want to end Patrick Chambers’ first year in the Big Ten basement.
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