Stanley Pringle, the team’s second leading scorer, missing three quarters of the game with an injury? That works, too.
The trouble for the Nittany Lions, who fell to 7-2 and lost at home for the first time in nine games, was that the reasons didn’t end there. Penn State was flat and disorganized at both ends of the floor against a well-prepared but average group of Owls (4-3).
“We let them be the aggressor from the start of the game,” Penn State point guard Talor Battle said. “We were in defense rather than on the attack.”
Even the Nittany Lions’ 12-6 start to the game, which included a 4-point play from Battle (19 points, seven assists in 40 minutes), looked uneven. Battle broke down defenders Ryan Brooks and Semaj Inge, only to find a clump of Owls pinching the paint and cutting off his passing lanes.
Penn State led 14-10 with 10:19 to play when Inge, who had a big night of his own in the lane, put back his own miss. Pringle rolled his right ankle on the play and limped into the locker room, where he would remain the rest of the night. Team officials called the injury a sprain.
With only one playmaking guard on the floor instead of two, Penn State’s offense became even more disjointed, continuing a drought of more than nine minutes without a field goal. Temple took a 19-14 lead on a putback by deep reserve Michael Eric with 6:31 left in the half.
“We didn’t pass the basketball like we had been passing the basketball,” Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. “When we got behind, everybody kind of tried to do something themselves.”
Jamelle Cornley, who had started 1-of-6 from the field, scored the Nittany Lions’ final 10 points of the half. He ended the drought with a 3-pointer, added putbacks after Andrew Jones and Jeff Brooks kept a pair of loose balls alive and made another three off a feed from Battle. Cornley and Battle were 7-for-16 in the first half; their teammates were 0-for-10.
The second half was all Owls. Penn State got to within two, 40-38, on Cornley’s reverse layup with 9:38 remaining, but Temple responded with a 13-4 run over the next five minutes, with seven of the points coming from Inge. The lanky, 6-foot-4 senior guard scored a career-high 19 points on just nine shots, adding six assists and four steals.
Ryan Brooks scored 15 points and Lavoy Allen had 11 points and 10 rebounds for Temple, which had one of its best offensive nights of the season with hardly any contribution from its top scorer. Senior guard Dionte Christmas, who had been averaging more than 21 points per game, picked up two early fouls and didn’t score his only basket until the five-minute mark, finishing 1-of-7.
The Nittany Lions, as DeChellis pointed out, weren’t great defensively Wednesday in Atlanta, either, but made enough plays at the offensive end to cover it. Saturday, Penn State shot 18-of-52 (35 percent) from the floor, missed 11 of 28 free throws and finished with its lowest point total of the season. Jones, Jeff Brooks and David Jackson (6 points each) helped Battle and Cornley (14 points, six rebounds) with the scoring on occasion but couldn’t sustain it. The Owls, who blocked 10 shots, limited Penn State’s top two scorers to 12 field goals on 29 shots.
“It’s a little bit clouded as to how good we were without Pringle in the game in the second half,” Temple coach Fran Dunphy said. “But overall we were pretty solid defensively.”
Penn State squandered a chance to fire up a crowd that flowed into the upper levels of the Jordan Center for the first time this season but exited early and a chance to build on the win over Georgia Tech.
The Nittany Lions host Army at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Jordan Center.
Source: centredaily.com
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