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Nittany Lions blast past Wake Forest for 76-54 win in ACC/B1G Challenge

Trading buckets early with Wake Forest in an ACC/Big Ten Challenge matchup at the Bryce Jordan Center late Wednesday evening, Penn State quickly shifted into another gear.

A Lamar Stevens jumper became a Myreon Jones steal and layup. Stevens quickly followed it with a steal and breakaway, windmill dunk of his own to force Demon Deacons head coach Danny Manning into a timeout before the first media break.

The sequence set the tone in a game the Nittany Lions would dominate to the tune of a 76-54 win.

It would not come without a necessary first-half wakeup call, though. Owning a 10-point advantage at the 13:56 mark, the Nittany Lions led by as many as 13 points before a series of missed shots, missed rebounds, and unforced turnovers allowed Wake Forest back into the game.

Penn State head coach Patrick Chambers, sensing the shift in momentum, called a timeout to better exemplify his point to his Nittany Lions. Just a week removed from a game in which Penn State held a 21-point second half lead and saw it evaporate into a 2-point loss to Mississippi, there was no mistaking his message.

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“I talked to them about that. This is no time for hero or sloppiness. No. Be simple and solid,” Chambers said, explaining that his team’s uptempo style on both ends of the floor will matter-of-factly lead to double-digit turnovers. “I want us to use our speed and we play really fast. We're going to have turnovers when you play fast, it just, it is what it is.

“We're going to have some turnovers. As long as we keep it around 12, I think we're in great shape, we're not getting too many live balls. But… we have to take care of the ball, we can't have back to back turnovers and things like that. That just ignites a run by the other team.”

Lingering between an 8- and 10-point lead from that point, with starters Lamar Stevens, Mike Watkins, Jamari Wheeler and Myles Dread all sitting on the bench with less than 3-minutes to play in the half, Penn State’s depth manifest itself fully.

Beginning with an Izaiah Brockington layup (13 points on 5-of-9 shooting), the Nittany Lion second-teamers ripped off an 11-1 run to close out the half and retake the game’s momentum.

“I thought that last four minutes of the first half really set the tone going into the second half. Lamar is on the bench, Jamari is on the bench, Mike was in and out, and I thought John [Harrar] and Seth Lundy and Curtis [Jones] and Brock and MJ obviously, I thought they really held down the fort,” Chambers said. “And really, not even hold down the fort, but increase the lead. To see that now, we did that at Syracuse as well. Seth Lundy is playing some good basketball right now. So it's nice to see that we can go deep into our bench and guys are producing.”

Owning a bulging 41-23 lead at the break, the second half would look much the same way as the Nittany Lions expanded their advantage with another 8-3 run in its opening minutes.

With Wake Forest unable to produce much offensively, shooting a paltry 29.3 percent from the floor for the game, and equally unable to corral much in the way of rebounds, ultimately on the wrong side of a 52-33 rebounding deficit, Penn State kept pushing. The result was a 30-point lead to cap a 14-3 run, the Nittany Lions ahead 63-33 with fewer than 10 minutes remaining.

Pleased by the performance, including Jones’ game-high 22 points, complemented by 14 from Stevens and a dominating 16-rebound, five-block game for Watkins, Chambers’ club improved to 7-1 on the season with a pair of conference games up next against Ohio State and Maryland.

“I thought our defense set the tone for this game. We defended, we rebounded, we really challenged our team, because Wake Forest did a great job of not allowing offensive rebounds, but also getting offensive rebounds,” Chambers said. “I thought the sophomores really stepped up, MJ and Brock. MJ has been pretty consistent but I was proud of Brock. He's been a little down and he really responded after New York, and that's what you want to see. You want to see a young man learn from two games and then come back and really ignite a run.”


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