No. 20 Penn State set for clash in styles Saturday against Wisconsin

At his Thursday afternoon press conference, Penn State head coach Patrick Chambers was lamenting the absence of Jamari Wheeler in his Nittany Lions’ 72-61 loss at Rutgers.

The junior point guard has started each of Penn State’s 15 games thus far this season, averaging 22.9 minutes while totaling the team’s second-most assists at 2.8 per game. Against the Scarlet Knights Tuesday evening, Wheeler finished with no points, only one assist, one steal, and one rebound in just 11 minutes of action.

And his fouls were to blame for it, notching two before the first media timeout of the game.

“I think what hurt us against Rutgers with Jamari, him picking up three fouls, he hasn't done that all year long,” Chambers said. “So we lost our pace and tempo on offense, and we kind of lost our toughness on defense, because he's the guy that they're all going to follow on the defensive end.

“That really hurt us because it became a half-court game. And we want to get up and down. We want a high-possession game and unfortunately with him on the bench, you can't do that.”

Against the Scarlet Knights, the Nittany Lions paid for it.

Averaging 75.7 possessions per game this season, up 5.1 possessions from their 2018-19 performance, the Nittany Lions were limited to just 71 offensive opportunities in Piscataway. Connecting on just 36.1 percent of their shots from the floor (22 of 61) and 23.1 percent from beyond-the-arc (6 of 26), the Nittany Lions finished with just 0.859 points per possession and their lowest scoring output since a 58-56 win against Yale in November.

A plan Rutgers brings to nearly every one of its games, the Scarlet Knights slowing it down to an average of 71.4 possessions per game this season, the Nittany Lions’ next opponent takes the methodology to the extreme.

Hosting Wisconsin Saturday at the Bryce Jordan Center (2:15 p.m., BTN), the Nittany Lions will face a Badgers team that ranks No. 347 of 353 teams in possessions per game this season with 66.2.

The result for the Badgers has been opposite ends of the spectrum with an elite scoring defense (60.9 points per game allowed) against its No. 252-ranked scoring offense at 68.5 points scored per game.

Cognizant of the conflicting styles that will run up against each other, Chambers explained the objective his Nittany Lions will have to accomplish Saturday afternoon.

“(It’s a) big contrast,” he said. “We got to get stops. You get stops, you get the run-out.

“Our defense has to tighten up, and we worked on our defense for quite a bit today in practice. We got to shore some things up, tighten some things up, get some stops. We get stops, we can go.”

Getting stops, of course, is only half of the equation.

Coming off a game in which Rutgers scored 42 of its 72 points in the paint, and another 22 from the free-throw line, giving up just two 3-pointers, the Nittany Lions again found themselves on the losing end of the rebounding battle. Allowing eight second-half offensive rebounds to the Scarlet Knights, the extra possessions helped seal Penn State’s fate.

“We gotta rebound. That's a little bit of a problem right now,” Chambers said. “Gotta rebound the ball. They had eight offensive rebounds in the second half. Rebounding hurt us in the second half and free throws.”

Through four Big Ten games, Penn State is 12th in the league in rebounding margin at -9.5 per game (33.3 to 42.8 for opponents) and has the league’s worst scoring defense, allowing 83.3 points per game.

Confident that his team had recalibrated after the loss in Piscataway, N.J., Chambers said he believed Saturday would mark a return to some of the fundamentals that have brought the Nittany Lions to this point.

“I think it's their approach. I think I see it if they bring in the right approach in film and they bring in the right approach to practice,” Chambers said. “Practice was highly competitive today, a lot of energy and they went after each other. So that tells me we're dialed back in.

“Not that we weren't against Rutgers, I want to give Rutgers credit, they played a great game. But I feel like we're back to building that foundation.”

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