Penn State Basketball dropped its second game of the ESPN Events Invitational, this time to the Butler Bulldogs 88 – 78.
A day after falling to No. 12 Texas A&M, Penn State built up a nine-point first-half lead over Butler. However, for the second day in a row, the defense really left a lot to be desired, as Penn State gave up 42 first-half points and trailed by three. Butler quickly came out of the halftime break and kept Penn State on its heels the entire game. The Nittany Lions struggled to keep the Butler dribblers in front of them, which was very surprising. This unfortunately included star defender Ace Baldwin. The season-long issues of turnovers and lack of shooting were again present, but the real development is the inability to play defense.
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Turnover creation was way down (9 forced turnovers after forcing 29 just two games ago). Sure, playing back-to-back games, both this early in the day, can have some challenges but the inability to play the pressure defense new Mike Rhoades is known for is the real takeaway. Despite some late second-half shooting by Leo O’Boyle, Zach Hicks and Baldwin, the Bulldogs built a 14-point lead with just over two minutes to go. Kanye Clary led the way with 28 points (but on 22 shots) and a pretty cold 2-8 from three. Baldwin chipped in with 15 but an overreliance on missed threes really hurt. Qudus Wahab only had 3 shot attempts (3 points, 7 rebounds) It’s unfortunately gut check time for Penn State as they will play the loser of Boise State and Mike Rhoades’ old team VCU at 10:30 pm Sunday to avoid an 0 for 3 performance in Florida.
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NittanyCentral is his second reporting job following the Men's Basketball program. He co-founded and co-hosts the Shots Gotta Fall - The Penn State Basketball Podcast (the premiere, the best, the only) with Steve Travis.
Smith's most proud moment covering the team was seeing the national No. 9 ranking during Pat Chambers' last year. His most embarrassing moment was spending almost a thousand dollars to travel 2,000 miles in 46 hours to watch the Nittany Lions lose to Temple in the 2011 NCAA Tournament (screw you Juan Fernandez).
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