Penn St Preview

Penn State will be competing with Nebraska to finish 11^th in the conference.  The Nittany Lions are breaking in a first year coach, who also happens to be the youngest coach in the B1G.  He had some success at Boston University, but this in the B1G.  It says something about your program when your coach leaves to go TO Navy, that can never be a good thing.

Offensively, Penn State does not have much going on.  They have one option: Tim Frazier, and when he is struggling to score because of a double team or the extra attention he automatically draws, inept would be a complement.  They are playing hard under their new coach, which is always good to see from any team, especially when they know it is unlikely they will make a post season tournament.  But they just do not have enough talent to compete in the B1G every game.  They are a perimeter team, with very little going for them down low.  In a physical conference they will struggle to score consistently because their only go to guy is a jump shooter.  I think Trey Burke made the right decision to come to Ann Arbor.  PSU does have a freshman guard: Trey Lewis who should see some quality minutes this year and will likely become a very good guard in future years, but as of right now he is nowhere near as polished as our own freshman.  

Defensively, this is the area that the new coach has improved on already.  Penn St cannot score a lot of points, but no matter how talented a team is they can always play hard on the defensive end and rebound well.  Penn St continues to improve in these areas.  Despite being 0-2 in the conference they are still positive in the net rebounding category, which is pretty impressive.  Penn St runs a mix of a man to man, and a zone defense.  They will switch on the fly and disguise both to make it hard for the opposing point guard to pick up.  They play a high pressure ¾ court trap for some of the game as well.  This gave Michigan some problems in the conference opener.  The only issue was that they were already losing by 20.  They like to trap in the corners of the court, and force the offense to throw a skip pass out of the double team.  This skip pass is where they key on to get a steal.  For not having much size, they do defend the paint reasonably well.  They will still struggle against OSU, MSU, Wisc, but who won’t struggle defending the post against these teams.

Michigan already beat Penn St at home very comfortably.  They have one more meeting in Happy Valley, where Michigan seems to struggle playing at.  It would be a very disappointing loss if Michigan cant find a way to get the season sweep.  They had a really tough time guarding Hardaway, and he finished with 26 points. Smot had another double double against PSU, and looked very effective when on the court.  Like the other bottom-dwellers on the B1G, Michigan is far more athletic than the Nittany Lions and should win by another comfortable margin when they play in March. 

Penn State will be playing Nebraska for the rights of the 11^th place finish this season.  From what I have seen, both teams look pretty bad but the Huskers have the higher upside with one of their key players still injured.  If he can come back, look for Penn St to be held between 0-2 conference wins this year.