Penn State Basketball hosts Minnesota in home finale: How to watch
By Evan Smith
Penn State Basketball takes the floor one final time at the Bryce Jordan Center Wednesday night, hosting the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the Nittany Lions’ final home game
Penn State Basketball hosts Minnesota Wednesday night at 7:00 pm on the Big Ten Network for the Nittany Lions‘ final home game of this odd 2020-2021 campaign.
Tale of the Tape:
KenPom: Penn State 40, Minnesota 55
NET Rankings: Penn State 52, Minnesota 69
Conference Standings: Penn State 12th (5-12, 8-13 overall), Minnesota 11th (6-12, 13-12 overall)
Spread: Penn State is a 4.5 point favorite
About the Gophers:
Minnesota begins and ends with star guard Marcus Carr.
Carr enters Wednesday averaging 20 points per game, and also leads the team in assists (5.0 apg). He plays over 35 minutes per game, and will likely draw the full attention of Jamari Wheeler on defense. He shoots 40.6% from the field and 80.5% from the stripe. He leads the team from three but is only shooting 33.5%. It’s important to note that not a single Gopher who’s played more than three games is shooting above 34% from three point land.
This is not a good shooting team from beyond the arc. “Former” sharpshooter Gabe Kalscheur is shooting 24.5% from 3 this year! The avid Penn State fans know this means he’ll go 7-9 from beyond Wednesday …
Minnesota was firmly in the NCAA tournament about six weeks ago, but have only won two of their last 10 games. The Gophers are now well OUT of any Bracketology. They haven’t won since Thursday February 11th vs then No. 24 Purdue. Since then: 13 point loss at Maryland, 10 point loss at Indiana, 31 point loss vs No. 5 Illinois, eight-point loss vs Northwestern, four-point loss at Nebraska.
Gotta make you feel a little bit better about PSU’s last few games, eh?
With only games against PSU and Rutgers Saturday, Minnesota is like Penn State in that it will need a deep run in the B1G Tournament in order to make the NCAA Tournament. Because they had a relatively full out of conference slate, however, Minnesota at 13-12 is in decent shape to make the NIT. Must be nice.
We #climb tonight at 7!