In Year 2 of the Mike Rhoades era, Penn State men’s basketball began the season 6-0 and got to 8-1 before suffering its first Big Ten loss of the season 80-76 to Rutgers on December 10. The Nittany Lions responded with four straight wins to get to 12-2, but have lost seven of their last eight their season is spiraling out of control.
The recent slide can be attributed to a difficult stretch in Big Ten play facing many of the conference’s best teams, but it also coincided with a back injury that Ace Baldwin Jr. suffered in a 91-52 loss to Illinois back on January 8. The reigning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and Rhoades’s longtime point guard dating back to VCU only missed one game and has played all 40 minutes in four of the five games since, but he’s been unable to right the ship.
Baldwin is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 14.1 points, 7.8 assists, and 2.0 steals a game, a stat line that earned him recognition as a Bob Cousy Award finalist as one of the top 10 point guards in the country.
The fifth-year senior has an absurd workload to carry on his ailing back, shouldering much of the team’s offensive creation responsibilities while also drawing the opponent's top perimeter player on the defensive end. And while he’s clearly the team's best and most impactful player, Baldwin may have to clean up one of the weakest parts of his game to buoy the Nittany Lion’s season and earn more individual recognition.
Baldwin averages the sixth-most turnovers per game in the country at 3.8, a massive jump from last season when he averaged 2.6 with a similar workload. Penn State has a 15% turnover percentage on the offensive end – middle of the pack in the Big Ten – however, the Nittany Lions have allowed the second most fast break points in the conference, which are often facilitated by those turnovers.
Rhoades wants to play at a fast pace and that can lead to turnovers both ways, but if Baldwin can’t protect the ball better down the stretch, the Nittany Lions will continue to sink to the bottom of the conference standings.
In many ways, Ace Baldwin is the biggest reason that Penn State got off to such a hot start and had high expectations heading into conference play, so it can be unfair to draw attention to his flaws when the rest of the roster has big problems. Still, if he’s considered to be one of the 10 best point guards in the country, then it comes with the territory. If anybody is going to bail out Rhoades this season, it’s going to be the player who’s been with him since 2020.