Nittany Lions flummoxed by questionable officiating in OT loss at Indiana

Penn State fought back from a deficit that spanned from 18 seconds into the game until just 28 seconds remained in regulation, only to see its efforts dashed at Indiana in an 87-85 overtime loss.

We detail the good, the bad, and what's next as the Nittany Lions fell to 0-3 in the Big Ten with a brutal stretch upcoming and 3-4 on the year.

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For the Nittany Lions, the first half at Indiana Wednesday night was about survival. Disjointed offensively and struggling to avoid being tagged with fouls on the defensive end, the Nittany Lions found themselves fluctuating between a 3- and 8-point deficit.

Still, they managed, sinking only to a 29-20 hole late in the half when Jim Ferry got hit with a technical for arguing a fairly obvious blown call (much, much more on this in "The Bad").

By gutting it out, though, the Nittany Lions set themselves up with as much as they could ask for in a venue that has offered limited success for the program through the years. How limited? The Nittany Lions hadn’t notched a win at Assembly Hall since February 2014 and has a 3-14 record there since 2000.

So when the Nittany Lions forced a shot-clock violation on the Hoosiers at the 15-minute mark in the second half, it set up a Myles Dread open look at a 3-pointer and, subsequently, the lead on the ensuing possession. Though it wouldn’t connect, Izaiah Brockington made the next chance count and finally evened the ledger for the first time since the opening tip, 49-49.

It wouldn’t last, but that wouldn’t deter the Nittany Lions. Gutted by a 13-1 run by the Hoosiers, the Lions kept swinging out of a timeout, sparked by a Sam Sessoms 3-pointer to reverse a 66-54 deficit to 70-66 less than four minutes later.

Again falling behind by nine on a 5-0 Indiana burst, the Nittany Lions positioned themselves for a final push with a 7-2 run capped by Jones 3-pointer at the 3:17 mark. Turning the Hoosiers over on the next possession, Sessoms again stepped up to bury a huge 3-pointer to make it a 77-76 deficit with 2:49 to go.

Trading jabs as the final minutes evaporated, Rob Phinisee’s tie-up of Sessoms eliminated Penn State’s opportunity to take the lead with 1:13 left to play. But by forcing an unsuccessful, contested look in the paint, Penn State earned another look at their first lead of the game in the next possession. Playing iso ball, Sessoms delivered, knocking down a dramatic step-back bucket to take an 80-79 lead with 28 seconds left to play, the Nittany Lions' first of the game and, according to Ferry, what he believed would last.

"We don't get fouled very much, so we need someone to get inside the paint and get fouled for us and break the defense down and get a guy a shot. He hit what obviously would have been the game winner on the basic same set that we went to late in the game thinking that he'd go back to it again," Ferry said. "He didn't make it, or didn't get fouled on it (in overtime), so we kind of went right back to the same thing that he made... earlier when he hit the shot to give us the lead at the end, which we felt good would be the game winner."

Still, via a controversial call on the floor that saw Indiana even it at the free throw line and send the game to overtime (again, see: "The Bad"), the Nittany Lions would again find themselves in a tie game at 85-85 with 43 seconds left to play on the back of two Jones free throws.

Yet another instance of Penn State battling through situations that appeared untenable at best, the effort wouldn’t be enough to notch the Nittany Lions’ first win of the Big Ten slate.

Penn State’s foul problems through the first two games of the Big Ten schedule extended to the third.

By the 9:40 mark in the first half, each of Jamari Wheeler, Seth Lundy, and Brockington was nabbed with two fouls. At the same point in the game, the Hoosiers had been to the free-throw line for eight attempts, good for 7 of their 19 total points.

Less than five minutes later, the Nittany Lions’ misfortune with the stripes was exacerbated by an apparent out-of-bounds turnover by the Hoosiers, “saved” by Trayce Jackson-Davis to Aljami Durham in the corner, who promptly buried a 3-pointer. Incensed by the no-call, Penn State interim head coach Jim Ferry drew a technical foul that sent Durham to the free-throw line to sink another pair. The five-point swing, at least, gave the Hoosiers a 29-20 advantage. That the Nittany Lions responded with a Sessoms’ 3-pointer and a run-out and-one for Myreon Jones helped them claw back against falling into a big halftime deficit.

Jackson-Davis, Rob Phinisee, and Durham would prove to be a problem for the Nittany Lions throughout the night, though. With the three combining to spark a 13-1 run over a 2:26 stretch bridging the midpoint of the second half, the Hoosiers bludgeoned Penn State’s 2-3 zone.

Able to battle back into the game, Penn State’s beef with the officiating crew would dramatically rear its head by the game’s end. Tagged with a questionable foul to Myles Dread on the floor to allow Indiana to even the score at 80, Penn State’s push up the floor off of the miss set up a Sessoms long 2-point attempt in which the guard was interfered with on his descent to the hardwood. Swallowing the whistle at the buzzer, the Nittany Lions and Hoosiers would head to overtime as a result as an incensed Ferry was restrained by his assistant coaching staff.

"We got great referees. The Big Ten has the best referees in the country. These guys work extremely hard. Every play is such a bang-bang play," he said in the postgame. "I obviously would have liked for it to have been called a foul. And it was two sequences. It was the last possession down the other end where I thought Myles got his hand in and stole it, they got to the free throw line on that. And I didn't think Sam was allowed his space to land... and I'm not too sure it wasn't some contact up top. But these guys are really good officials, they work really hard, it's just really disappointing."

In the overtime period, the Hoosiers were again bailed out by a clear turnover off the foot of Armaan Franklin that returned possession to the hosts.

All setting up a last-second sequence with the game evened at 85-85, a Phinisee fallaway with the shot clock winding down sailed through the iron to give the Hoosiers an 87-85 lead they wouldn’t relent. Leaving the ball in Sessoms’ hands, the transfer’s dribble-drive left slipped out of his hands and into the clutches of Brockington, who was unable to hit the rim on his off-balance prayer as the clock expired.

Ferry came into the tilt with the Hoosiers acknowledging the trouble with Penn State’s sparse start to the conference schedule.

At 0-2, while the majority of the conference had already played three or four games, the Nittany Lions’ slate at Michigan Dec. 15 and Illinois Dec. 23 proved frustrating.

“I wish we had more games,” Ferry said. “I’m one of those coaches, I like games. There's a lot of coaches out there that like practice, that don't like the games as much because I guess there's a winner or a loser. I like games. I'd play games all the time. It's been really difficult to stay in a groove and get in a groove.”

Ferry and the Nittany Lions will now get that opportunity.

Beginning with the Wednesday night matchup in Bloomington, Penn State has started a stretch of eight games in the next 24 days. Making matters more challenging beyond the sheer volume of games, the Nittany Lions’ opponents are among the best the Big Ten has to offer.

Returning to face Wisconsin at the Bryce Jordan Center to open the new year (1/3), the Nittany Lions will travel to Ohio State (1/6), see Michigan at home (1/9), Rutgers (1/12), face back-to-backs at Purdue (1/17) and Illinois (1/20), and finish the weekly run with Northwestern (1/23). Of those teams, the Badgers (6th), Buckeyes (25th), Wolverines (16th), Scarlet Knights (14th), Illini (15th), and Wildcats (19th) are all currently ranked in the AP Top 25.

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