Heading into his second year in Happy Valley, head coach Mike Rhoades brought the reigning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, Ace Baldwin Jr. back for his final season of eligibility along with much of the core of his 2023-24 roster. So, when the Nittany Lions began the year 6-0, their best start in 25 years, and beat No. 8 Purdue to open conference play and get to 8-1, it felt as though the program had real momentum. However now, in the thick of Big Ten play, it’s clear that Rhoades is at least a year, and maybe more, away from having a real contender.
On Wednesday night in Champaign, Illinois, Penn State fell 91-52 to No. 13 Illinois, the Nittany Lion’s second-straight conference loss after a 77-71 letdown against Indiana at the Palestra in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon. Sitting at 12-4 (2-3) and heading into a matchup with No. 15 Oregon on Sunday in Happy Valley, the excitement is gone at a football school long searching for a successful counterpart on the hardwood.
Similar weaknesses cropped up against the Illini, a lack of three-point shooting, only hitting two shots from beyond the arc for the back-to-back games, and defensive rebounding, allowing Illinois to create 19 extra possessions with offensive boards. Known for his defensive prowess, Rhoades’s team allowed three different Illinois players to have 20-point outings, and that’s without head coach Brad Underwood’s superstar freshman Kasparas Jakucionis, who missed the game with an injury.
“They had a lot of different weapons,” Rhoades said in his postgame press conference, “and sometimes when one of your good players is out other guys step up and play free, and you saw that today.”
The Nittany Lions failed to get a similar boost when Baldwin, Rhoades’s reliable point guard since their days at VCU, left the game with an injury after playing just 15 minutes. For his own efforts, Baldwin finished with 0 points on 0-6 shooting with two assists to three turnovers.
Penn State’s star is a defensive weapon, a nuisance to the Big Ten's best players on the defensive end of the floor, but on the other end, Rhoades has yet to find his reliable offensive catalyst. Maybe that player will eventually be Kayden Mingo, the headline attraction of Rhoades’s 19th-ranked 2024 high school recruiting class, and the highest-rated high school recruit in program history. With a fanbase placated by the school’s first College Football Playoff appearance, Rhoades has time to find out, but Wednesday night’s blowout was a reminder of just how far the gap between Penn State and the conference’s top teams, really is.
“Sometimes when you play a Big Ten game, you get shellacked and you’ve got to be ready to move on and get to the next one,” Rhoades admitted on Wednesday night, “and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
It took James Franklin 11 years to finally crack the CFP, a tournament that only this year expanded threefold from four teams to 12. Even at a program that has only qualified for the NCAA Tournament three times this century, Rhoades won’t have the kind of runway to find his way into the 68-team field. Still, he’s far from any deadline or existential pressure on his job.
When Micah Shrewberry fled for Notre Dame after the 2023 season and a March Madness win, it was obvious that getting back to the big dance would be a tough task for his predecessor. And for all the excitement that an impressive start and a win over the Boilermakers generated in Year 2 under Rhoades, that’s proving to be true. Illinois just provided a stern reminder.
Penn State has been on the bubble of early season bracketology, and with 12 wins on the season, just four fewer than last year, a tournament berth is still on the table. The Nittany Lion’s realistic goals are still in front of them, but any fantasy of an upstart conference contender was squashed with consecutive losses to Indiana and Illinois. As long as it isn’t the start of a spiral, maybe a recalibration isn’t the worst thing.