Penn State officially misses inaugural 15-team Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament
As Maryland sophomore guard Rodney Rice sunk a clinching mid-range jumper with 17 seconds left at Bryce Jordan Center in State College, PA on Saturday afternoon, Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades saw his second year leading the Nittany Lions effectively come to an end. Penn State has one game left on the schedule, next Saturday at No. 11 Wisconsin, but at 15-15 with a 5-14 conference record have been eliminated from contention for the Big Ten Tournament.
In the first year of the expanded 18-team Big Ten after the conference added UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington, the conference only the top 15 teams in the league qualify for its postseason contest. Therefore, Penn State and Mike Rhoades will not be making the trip to Indianapolis next week.
It was unlikely that the Nittany Lions would have made a run to claim the conference championship and the automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament, but Saturday’s result on Senior Day in Happy Valley, a 68-64 loss to the No. 16 Terrapins, adds to Rhoades’s impassioned argument that Penn State would at least be a tough out in a one-and-done format.
Penn State’s season wasn’t necessarily derailed by nagging injuries to star point guard Ace Baldwin Jr. and junior center Yanic Konan Niederhauser. However, those injuries made matters worse once the season began to turn south following the 12-2 start.
Rhoades’s complaints about the Big Ten’s lack of inclusivity felt a bit hollow as the second-year head coach stared down the reality of missing out on postseason basketball. Still, a veteran-laden roster that fought to the bitter end despite the hole it dug itself with an extended midseason swoon may have deserved a better ending than a senior day letdown and a meaningless finale in Madison next week.
Now, Rhoades is forced to look to the future sooner than expected, though, the future may be the silver lining of this disastrous season. The coaching staff has the opportunity to reset the roster and build around the arrival of the highest-rated recruit in program history, Kayden Mingo.
