Penn State basketball fans have watched this tragic story unfold throughout the entire season.
The Nittany Lions' defense locked down Indiana on two straight possessions with less than four minutes remaining. Almost 70 seconds yielded no points for the Hoosiers until Indiana grabbed an offensive rebound with four seconds left on their second possession and hit a game-clinching shot. With a three-point lead and 2:58 to go, Verdell Jones III nailed a 3-pointer to suck the hope out of the Bryce Jordan Center crowd.
"That was huge for us. We didn't come up with a rebound at a critical time and that's kind of been the story [this season]," Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. "We just haven't been able to get the big rebound when we need it. Those were two big possessions back-to-back. Demoralizing."
The Lions (8-10, 0-6 Big Ten) failed on their sixth attempt for a Big Ten victory, dropping a closely contested 67-61 battle in front of a crowd of 8,251 at the BJC on Thursday night. This six-game losing skid matches the Lions' worst since January of 2008, when the Lions dropped six in a row in conference.
When the Lions trimmed the Hoosiers' lead to three with 4:52 to go, the Hoosiers answered each gut check thrown at them and responded with a timely bucket. Guard Devan Dumes scored 15 points off the bench to lead the Hoosiers, followed by Jones with 14. Thursday's win was the first road win for Indiana in the two-year coaching regime of Tom Crean.
Despite solid defense from the Lions in the paint, Indiana (9-9, 3-3) hit 9-for-20 from beyond the 3-point arc, despite coming into the game only hitting 35 percent. The Lions only went 4-for-22, 18 percent, from downtown, including a 1-for-11 mark in the second half.
The home team held a 34-18 scoring edge in the key and outrebounded the Hoosiers 41-35 but didn't grab enough loose balls to get key stops they needed, yielding 17 second-chance points to their opponent.
It was the eighth time this season the Lions have lost while out-rebounding their opponent.
"Everybody's trying to do something instead of letting it all come to them," DeChellis said. "And sometimes it's just not a very smart decision at that point at that time. We just haven't done anything timely."
The Lions tied the game at 40 with 13:44 left in the second half, but that would be the last time the game was tied.
Junior guard Talor Battle paced the Lions with 22 points on 7-for-18 shooting despite nursing a sprained ankle he suffered in practice Tuesday. He said he told his teammates at halftime they lacked energy in the first half and was visibly frustrated after the game.
"We keep losing close games. We have to get over the hump one time just to see how it feels to win," Battle said. "Until we make a play like Coach speaks about, we're going to continue to have sad faces after the game."
Crean, whose Hoosier program lost all but one of its players two years ago, reminded the media after the game of Penn State's loss of "major league players." Crean said he would not want to play the Lions in a couple weeks.
"It takes time for guys to realize what has to be done," Crean said. "They're a couple buckets away from having a winning record in this league, and I hope everybody remembers that."
Andrew Ott started his third-straight game and scored 13 points and grabbed nine rebounds. Freshman forward Bill Edwards started the first time in his career but only played three minutes in the second half. Edwards turned the ball over three times in the first half despite DeChellis labeling him as one of the team's best passers in practice.
"I don't know how we snap out of it," DeChellis said. "It's about a confidence thing right now. We didn't play with a whole lot of confidence in the first half. Once we got into the [game], we didn't do what we needed to do to win the game."
