Penn State Phryday

Yinzers,

Well, the season is over for the 2009-2010 Penn State Nittany Lion men's basketball team. Personally, it went by extremely fast for yours truly since I did not attend any games, and just kept up by reading post-game box scores. This year was pretty tough in the Big-10 with most of the teams having extremely good seasons, contrary to pre-season expectations...with the exception of the Nittany Lions. Don't get me wrong, I love my Nittany Lions, but I find it hard to believe that there were fellow students out there that thought the Nittwits could make it to, and win a few NCAA tournament games. I do not see coach Dichellis hanging around that much longer. This was the first year he had all of his recruits in the system. What most fans do not know is that Jamelle Cornley, Andrew Jones, Brandon Hassel and Geary Claxton were NOT Dichellis' recruits. Granted, he did bring in some quality players in by the names of Taylor Battle and Chris Babb, but there was no size brought in with those two young men. We'll see how the program shapes up in the next few years. If Penn State can get some physicality under the basket, they could be a top-half team in the Big-10. You need big men in the Big-10.

Penn State's final regular season game was last Saturday when they welcomed the #6 Purdue Boilermakers to the Beej Center. The Nittany Lions put up a good fight, but were simply over-matched by the Boilermakers. They are ranked #6 for a reason. Purdue came out on top 64-60. The Nittany Lions did get 3 players into double digits in scoring. Jeff Brooks had 12 points, Taylor Battle had 17 points and Chris Babb also had 17 points. It was just another one of those games. It seemed to be the story of the Penn State season. The story of the season was the story of Tantalus (If you don't know it, look it up. It's a Greek myth and where we get the term 'tantalizing'). No matter how far the Nittany Lions stretched, the victories seemed to be just out of reach. At any rate, Penn State now rolled into the Big-10 tournament in Indianapolis with the 11th seed.

Big-10 Tournament Time

Penn State came into the Big-10 tournament as the 11th seed and drew the 6th seed Minnesota Golden Gophers in the first round. The game was played last night at the same time as the Penguins/Hurricanes game, therefore I did not watch the Nittany Lions last night. The Nittany Lions came in with a license to kill Gophers, issued by the government of the United Nations. However, the Gophers will not quit. They are like the Viet-kong, the Varment-Kong, and they must be stopped. However, Tubby Smith's Gophers came out with a purpose. At the end of the first half, the Gophers had a 9 point lead on the Nittany Lions and never looked back. The end result of this first round game was Minnesota 76 - Penn State 55. Penn State did spread the ball around with Taylor Battle, David Jackson, Chris Babb and Andrew Jones all contributing 10 points, but the lack of rebounding ended up being the thorn in the Lions' paw...with no mice to pull it out. Penn State finishes the 2009-2010 season with a strong hold on the 11th rank in the Big-10 and a final record of 11-20 (3-15). Better luck next year guys.

For now, we enjoy our last Friday of spring break and look forward to the 2010 Blue/White game, which will be televised on ESPN2, Saturday April 24 at 2:00 pm this year, and to the 2010 Nittany Lion football season.

For the Glory,

B Brog