Talor Battle's torrid shooting finally came to a halt, but for the Penn State men's basketball team, it didn't matter.
The Nittany Lions had fought and scrapped for 12 games seeking their first Big Ten win yet managed to come up short every time.
That all changed on Wednesday.
Behind a balanced scoring attack that saw five players in double figures, Penn State (9-16, 1-12 Big Ten) defeated Northwestern (17-9, 6-8) by a score of 81-70 at Welsh-Ryan Arena in Evanston, Ill. The win marked Penn State's fourth in a row against the Wildcats and its seventh in its last eight games against them.
"It's a relief," Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis told the Penn State radio network. "Our kids have always given us a pretty good effort in practice. We've always continued to have pretty good spirit even though we weren't winning games, and I think that says something about them."
DeChellis said Battle was ailing from the flu and knew his point guard wouldn't be at full strength going in to the game.
The Big Ten's scoring leader, Battle managed just 10 points on 2-of-8 shooting but contributed seven rebounds and six assists. D.J. Jackson and Chris Babb led the team with 20 points each and were joined by Drew Jones and Jeff Brooks in double figures.
"It was good to see guys playing up to their potential," Jackson told the Penn State radio network. "Drew had a great game, Chris had a great game, Jeff Brooks stepped up, [Andrew] Ott had some big rebounds. It was good to see all the guys contributing for us."
Northwestern employed a 1-3-1 zone defense, and Jackson said associate head coach Kurt Kanaskie found a weakness while scouting the Wildcats. Kanaskie noticed 5-foot-10 Northwestern guard Juice Thompson was playing the bottom of the zone and sent in the Lions' taller players.
With Jackson abusing Thompson for a 7-of-8 shooting night and Babb continuing to find openings, Penn State took a scalpel to the zone defense. Aside from his shooting from 3, Babb added six assists and held Northwestern sixth man Drew Crawford to five points.
"We shared the ball so well tonight. We really passed the ball nicely," DeChellis said. "I thought we did a really good job of making the extra pass and penetrating and pitching and finding guys underneath as well. I was really, really happy with everybody tonight."
Penn State tallied 21 assists on its 27 made field goals, many of which were feeds into the low post where Jones continued to get open. Despite coming off the bench, Jones reeled in seven boards to go with his 10 points and was fired up after each of his baskets.
The Lions shot 87 percent from the foul line, going 20-for-23, and out-rebounded the Wildcats by a 32-15 margin. And though the Lions finally got over the hump and won their first conference game, the team is already looking to follow assistant coach Lewis Preston's mantra of "on to the next one."
"It feels good, but at the same time, we've got another game on Saturday to prepare for," Jackson said. "We'll be happy about this win tonight, but tomorrow we'll start preparing for Michigan."
