Penn State Basketball rolled Loyola (Maryland) 90-65 behind Cam Wynter’s 18 points and some more hot shooting.

The Nittany Lions deployed the same starting lineup that delivered an opening-night win, Penn State Basketball started out hot again, hitting 5 of their first 8 threes to open up a 21-13 lead at the under 12 media timeout. 

Thursday’s game against Loyola essentially started right where Monday’s win vs Winthrop left off with the Nittany Lions moving the ball quickly up the court, a significant change from a year ago.  The only real detriment was two fouls on Njie again, forcing him to the bench.

Things started to get sloppy as Jameel Brown checked. Funk forced a three and Pickett a tough leaner, allowing the Greyhounds to cut the lead to 2 as Head Coach Micah Shrewsberry called a timeout and put Kebba Njie back on the floor.

Two more threes extended the lead but hesitation from Dorsey under the basket caused a missed layup, which he compounded by committing a foul 90 feet from the basket on the rebound, sending Loyola to the free throw line.

Dread answered with another three (seriously could the name of my podcast, Shots Gotta Fall, be any more appropriate this year).

As great as the shooting was in the first half, you knew it would cool down as the Lions would revert to the mean … but, that would be wrong.

Penn State Basketball came out of the half and hit three of their first four three point attempts to push the lead to nineteen just three minutes into the half.

The shooting was so contagious a student drained a half court shot during the media timeout.  Back to back and-1’s from Wynter and Njie (the first dunk of the year) and everything was coming up all PSU, with only Lundy’s fourth foul dampening the Nittany Lion effort (2nd straight game an important player was playing with three fouls in a route for some reason…). 

The second half continued without much intrigue (aside from a classic rendition of BJC shot clock issues).  The only questions left were if Penn State would cover (-17.5) and if they’d break the school record for made threes they set Monday (18).