With lighter wallet, Ferry’s zone fails, Penn State Basketball falls to Illinois
By Evan Smith
It’s going to be a long year folks. We’ll get into that more as Penn State Basketball fell to No. 22 Illinois by a score of 79-65, in a game that wasn’t really that close.
Penn State Basketball came out shooting well, hitting six of their eight three-point attempts. But, the Lions couldn’t keep up with the Fighting Illini’s shooting.
Using a different starting line-up (Buttrick in for Lundy), Coach Jim Ferry went almost exclusively to a 2-3 zone to match up against the Illini front court. Simply, it did not work.
Illinois continually passed to the high post and from there found wide open shooters on the wing or the back cutter for an easy lay-up. Fouls were a huge concern, as usual, and Myles Dread left the game with a left shoulder injury and would not return.
A late half scrum resulted in two immediate techicals on Freshman D.J. Gordon and Illini Da’Monte Williams. While it was a relatively mild scrum with no punches thrown, an almost 10:00 review followed.
Players from both teams did leave their benches and there was concern from the announcers as the review went on we could be looking at some ejections. For some reason, after all that review, the officials just added one more technical to Izaiah Brockington. Sure, why not. Nits down 14 at the half.
A quick steal by Myreon Jones led to a Jamari Wheeler layup to cut the lead to 12.
But, Penn State could never pull closer. Kyle McCloskey, Abdou Tsimbila and D.J. Gordon saw significant minutes for the first time this season. Tsimbila showed some life down low and it was nice to see Gordon getting real minutes.
But it didn’t really matter. The second half result was known before it started. And that’s not a great feeling.