Penn State Basketball’s Comeback Falls Just Short Against Purdue

In just the second Big Ten Title game in program history, Penn State Basketball used a 22-6 run to spark a thrilling comeback, but ultimately fell just short to Purdue.

It was an ugly game for the Nittany Lions for the most part as they fell to Purdue 67-65 on Sunday afternoon.

The fourth game in four days seemed to catch up to the team. Four stressful, thrilling, down to the wire games, left a lot of Penn State’s attempts short today. But that didn’t stop the team from fighting until the very end.

The game started with an offensive struggle for Penn State Basketball. After a quick 4-0 lead, the Nittany Lions made just 1 of their next 11 shots. They got a lot of open drives to the basket but were afraid to shoot at the rim with Edey looming.

Eventually, Edey would go to the bench and Penn State would quickly go on a 9-2 run with back-to-back threes by Dread. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t fully capitalize. Penn State got a lot of good looks from the field, but they just weren’t falling. A lot of balls going down and out. Meanwhile, Purdue had back-to-back possessions with miracle shots going in as the shot clock expired. Maybe it’s just one of those days.

At the half, Penn State was just 2/8 from 3. Edey had 15 points and 7 rebounds. David Jenkins also had 11 for the Boilermakers.

For most of the second half, the story stayed the same. Penn State struggled with guarding Edey, and the shots didn’t fall on offense. However, as we’ve seen all season, never count this team out.

Suddenly, Seth Lundy and the Nittany Lions got going. In a role reversal from yesterday, it was now Penn State’s turn to full court press. Trailing by 17 with 6 minutes remaining, the Lions looked to mount their comeback.

Lundy would score 17 of his 19 in the second half before fouling out. Purdue would struggle to score with Edey off the floor, and the Nittany Lions started taking advantage of the open looks that they got all night. All of a sudden we had a 13-2 run to get the lead from 17 down to 6.

I thought Lundy fouling out would be a death blow to the comeback run. But it wasn’t. Wynter got going, Dread hit another 3, and now it was a 22-6 run over the final 6 minutes. The lead was down to 1.

After an intentional foul, Purdue went 1 of 2 from the line and Penn State had a shot to tie or win the game with 3 seconds remaining.

Pickett had to inbound over Edey, which made things difficult, but Dread caught the ball and handed it off to Wynter for a potential game winning three. Unfortunately, Wynter was called for a travel and that was the end. An anticlimactic ending to a thrilling final 6 minutes.

Of course, we all wanted the win. But this was an incredible showing of heart by the Nittany Lions. I can’t help but be excited to see how this team does in the NCAA tournament. We have a plethora of guards that can get hot, which is the typical sign of a dangerous team in March.