Game Day Essentials: Game #29 at Penn St

Penn St. Info

Head Coach: Micah Shrewsberry
Location: University Park, PA
Conference: B1G
Nickname: Nittany Lions

Mascot: The Nittany Lion
Typical Rotation Depth: 6+

Spread: Penn State by 10.5

KenPom rank: 81

Other:

• First meeting this season
• This is technically Penn St's 3rd coach in 3 years.  Jim Ferry was the interim coach last season after Pat Chambers was let go. Penn St. got a pretty big basketball name in  Micah Shrewsberry who was an assistant under Brad Stevens at Butler and Boston and Matt Painter at Purdue.

Player to watch: John Harrar

Harrar is a lot like Derrick Walker whereas he's a PF playing center and converts in the paint at a high rate.  Harrar outshines Walker on the boards though and is fresh off pulling down 20 boards vs. Northwestern.  At times during the last 4 seasons three guys aren't enough to block him out.

The Skinny: 

This isn't a particularly good Penn St team but they're still tough and bring plenty of effort. They have wins at home vs Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan St.  With a lineup that has 6 guys who make up most of the minutes, PSU has one of the slowest paces in D-1.  They're essentially hunting for open 3s which doesn't seem hard to do vs Nebraska.  Defensively, they're packing the paint. Nebraska needs to attack the paint because of how helpful getting PSU in foul trouble will be but expect a lot of 3s today.

I think Nebraska still has some fight in them but they'll need all the effort they can muster to keep Penn St from rebounding them to death.

Prediction: Penn St 82 - Nebraska 68