With a patchwork eight-man rotation, the Penn State men's basketball team scrapped and clawed enough to keep No. 4 Wisconsin worried, never trailing by double-digits until six minutes remained in the game.
After Geary Claxton headed to the bench midway through the first half after picking up his third foul, the Nittany Lions managed to limit Wisconsin's halftime lead to five.
When Wisconsin guard Michael Flowers hit two consecutive three pointers midway through the second half to put the Badgers up eight, Jamelle Cornley, who finished with 20 points, replied with back-to-back baskets to keep the Lions within striking distance.
But Wisconsin's Player of the Year candidate Alando Tucker single handedly doubled Wisconsin's six point lead with 7:47 left to 12 in a two minute span, and the Badgers went on to defeat Penn State, 71-58, last night at the Bryce Jordan Center.
The loss is Penn State's eighth straight, and Wisconsin (23-3, 9-1) has now beaten the Lions (10-12, 1-8) in seven of their last eight meetings.
"We played pretty good for 33 minutes," Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. "Then the last seven we didn't play particularly well."
Part of that reason was Tucker, who finished with a game-high 24 points. As the Lions kept game the close, the senior guard stayed patient, never wavering, and finally erased any suspicions that the co-Big Ten leading Badgers would leave the Jordan Center with anything other than a win.
"He was the leader of the run they had in the second half, which blew the game open," Cornley said.
Before that happened, the first apparent breaking point for the Lions came midway through the second half, when Flowers put in two 3-pointers from each corner of the Lions defensive zone.
Coming into the game, Flowers had been shooting 15.4 percent from behind the arc in conference play. When he connected on a pair, some players and coaches felt a familiar twinge as Wisconsin went up, 51-43.
"There's been certain players who are not really labeled as shooters who hit a key bucket [against us]," Cornley said. "Certain players who we've scouted, they're not really threats out there. So when [Flowers] turns around and makes a wide open shot, you're surprised."
For two more minutes the Lions kept Wisconsin's lead within single-digits until Tucker sealed Penn State's fate.
"We competed. We played hard," DeChellis said. "It was a great atmosphere. Our students were really good tonight and had a lot of energy and I really appreciate that."
Notes & quotes
DeChellis on former player John Amaechi, who will announce he is gay in a soon-to-be released book and become the first NBA player, retired or active, to do so publicly: "I just feel good for him that at some point in his life he can come out and talk about his sexuality, that's positive." DeChellis recruited Amaechi while an assistant coach for Bruce Parkhill in the early '90s. ... The Penn State bench received a technical foul after DeChellis argued a late foul call on Milos Bogetic with 5:27 left in the first half. The Badgers made three of four free throws to go ahead, 25-24. The technical on DeChellis was the fourth-year coach's first at Penn State. "I've said worse things," he said, adding he intended to give his team a "presence" he thought they were lacking in past three games.
