Penn State Basketball’s first half runs bury Gophers on Senior Night

Penn State Basketball stormed out to an early lead, and never looked back in a home victory over the Minnesota Golden Gophers

Penn State Basketball used a blitzkrieg to end the first half, and beat Minnesota 84-65 on senior night at the Bryce Jordan Center.

The Nittany Lions led 24-22 after Minnesota’s Isaiah Ihnen made two free throws at the 5:04 mark. From there, Penn State Basketball went on one of those casual 22-6 runs to end the half.

Penn State Basketball was incredibly balanced in the first half; Jones had 11, 8 for Brockington, 7 (!) for Buttrick, 6 for Harrar, 5 for Lundy and Dread and 4 for Sessoms.  Here is the final play of the half:

The 18-point halftime lead ballooned to 24 with 17:11 to go off a Jamari Wheeler step back three-pointer and the game was never closer than 11 the rest of the way.

Penn State Basketball absolutely owned the glass (48-33 overall, 17-9 offensive).  Minnesota is a bad three point shooting team, and finished 5-of-18 (27.7%) from three.  Constant pressure on Minnesota’s star guard Marcus Carr forced him to pass out of double teams all night.

Carr finished with 22 points but on 4-12 from the field as most of his points (13) came from the free throw line.

Kudos to the five seniors (Harrar, Wheeler, Buttrick, Kyle McCloskey and Taylor Nussbaum) who started tonight and finished their home careers strong.

With the NCAA announcing an extra year of eligiblity, it’s possible any of them could come back so we’ll wait to properly eulogize their collegiate careers until we hear more from them.