Penn State locks down Indiana late, escapes with crucial win

If you're an Indiana fan, you've seen this movie too many times for your liking over the past couple of months. If you're a Penn State fan, you've seen this movie a lot, and can't wait to see several more showings... particularly in the NCAA Tournament.
 
The Nittany Lions, playing at home in Happy Valley, were about to give the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee a convenient reason to exclude them from March's big party. Down 57-53 with roughly five and a half minutes remaining in regulation time, Coach Ed DeChellis's team stood on the verge of the worst loss imaginable: a late-February home defeat against a 6-21 Indiana club immersed in a year of rebuilding from the wreckage Kelvin Sampson left behind. Without a strong non-conference win to stand on, Penn State had to make its Big Ten resume stand up to scrutiny, and a loss to the Hoosiers would have cancelled out the value of wins over Purdue and Illinois. (PSU's road win at Michigan State would have remained intact.)
 
Heading into the most important five-minute stretch of their season, the Nittany Lions--showing the heart of a winner--produced a higher level of effort. Defending the Hoosiers with an urgency befitting their precarious postseason position, the home team delighted the Bryce Jordan Center crowd by denying Indiana a single field goal down the stretch. Powered by their ability to guard in late-game situations the Lions gutted out a 61-58 decision that solidified their status as an NCAA Tournament team.
 
This win was emblematic of Penn State's season, in that it lacked style points but showed a world of interior beauty. After seven years in the college basketball wilderness, the Nittany Lion program is poised to re-enter the big leagues in the eighth season since the Crispin brothers (under coach Jerry Dunn) led the Lions to the Sweet 16 in 2001. The reason for this resurgence is that Penn State has been able to thrive in the back-alley fistfights that characterize Big Ten basketball. In a league known for cuttrhoat defense, Penn State has been able to defend particularly well at the end of games, and thereby pull close victories out of the fire. This was seen in a 38-33 win at Illinois, but another game more precisely shows how the Lions bumped the Big Red in the closing moments of regulation.

Saturday's three-point escape over Tom Crean's boys from Bloomington was a virtual replica of a win PSU attained against Iowa on Jan. 24 in the Jordan Center. On that night, Penn State also found itself trailing (59-55) with three minutes left in regulation. On that night, PSU also managed to deny its opponent a single basket in that amount of time. On that night, PSU also endured subpar shooting to prevail on the basis of pure grit, by a 63-59 score.
 
One Houdini against the Hawks became another close-shave act of survival against the Hoosiers five weeks later, and as a result, a lineup of Lions that doesn't always produce an aesthetically pleasing performance managed to do the only thing that really matters: win.
 
The movie was indeed familiar for Penn State basketball fans. It might be a gruesome horror flick at times, but the ending is almost always happy. Given the drought experienced by this program in the past decade, Nittany Lion fans will swallow a pill or two, and gladly buckle up for any other rollercoaster rides that lie ahead.

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