Feb. 8, 2015
By Matt Allibone, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - When the Nittany Lion men's basketball team needed a lift Saturday afternoon against Nebraska, it came courtesy of two of the youngest players on the team.
Geno Thorpe and Shep Garner have less than three years of Division I experience between them, yet it was the guard duo provided that clutch play throughout the second half as the Nittany Lions overcame multiple Cornhusker rallies to win 56-43.
Despite not registering a point in the first half, Garner nailed three 3-pointers for nine points in the second, while Thorpe finished the game as Penn State's leading scorer with 14 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
"This is what you get out of it, we can respond, we can punch back." head coach Patrick Chambers said. "Shep Garner hit huge threes, huge threes. There's a freshman who stepped up and hit big time shots. I thought D.J. Newbill's dives, just laying it all out there. He was not going to let his team lose and he responded really well. I thought Geno Thorpe did some good things...there's so much we can learn from that experience and show how much we are growing."
After 25 minutes of basketball, it didn't look the Nittany Lions would need anyone to step up down the stretch. Their defense had stifled Nebraska to just 13 points in the first half and an early 15-4 run in the second gave the Lions a 37-17 lead with 15 minutes to play.
It was then that the Huskers began to heat up, implementing a tight press that kept Penn State in check and generated chances that led to 14-0 run of their own. With 9:40 left, the Nittany Lions' lead had been cut down to 37-31.
Just as it seemed Nebraska had completely seized momentum, Garner delivered, nailing his second 3-pointer of the half to reignite the Nittany Lion faithful. Nearly seven minutes later, with Penn State's lead at 48-41, the freshman guard hit another triple for a 10-point lead that proved to be insurmountable.
"Shep, he's one of those guys with unlimited heart," Newbill said. "He's not afraid of a big moment and that's what you love about him. He'll miss five and come down and shoot the next one. He's fearless. For us, we all had confidence in him. When it left his hand, we were like, `oh, this is good.' Shep is a great shooter so we have a lot of confidence in him."
Thorpe on the other hand, was his usual firecracker self, diving after loose balls, zipping into passing lanes and slamming home crowd-pleasing dunks. The sophomore scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half and had three dunks, the final one coming off a steal with 1:02 remaining for a 53-43 lead that officially put the game away.
It was the guard's 10th double-digit scoring performance of the season and his second highest total (he scored 19 against Duquense on Dec. 12), yet it still might have taken a backseat to his defensive performance.
Not only did Thorpe grab three steals, he also spent much of the evening hounding Nebraska's Terran Petteway, the conference's third leading scorer at 19 points-per-game. Though the Husker guard has three inches and 35 pounds on Thorpe, he managed to score just 13 points on 4-12 shooting.
"We just stick to our game plan, the game plan that coach Chambers comes up with," Thorpe said. "We just try to play solid defense and that's what we did [today]. We've been practicing Nebraska's cuts for a few days. We fall back on defending and rebounding. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary for us."
"It's not one guy versus Terran Petteway, it's Penn State basketball against Terran Petteway," Newbill added. "It takes a team to stop a player like that who can score at will, one of the best player's in this league. We just defended, rebounded, talked. That's what that was."
Overall, it was one of the Nittany Lions' best defensive performances of the season, as they held the Huskers to an astounding 17 percent percentage in the first half and 29 percent overall.
Having scored just 53 points, the Nittany Lions know they need to be sharper on offense moving forward. Still, Big Ten basketball games have the potential to turn into old-school slugfests, and on Saturday, it was Penn State that came out on top.
"It was positive because it was an ugly fist-fight, it was a rock fight." Chambers said. "I'm okay with ugly as long as you get the win. I felt like they came out of halftime and did some good things."