Balanced Purdue staves off Penn State men's basketball team

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Sasha Stefanovic led a balanced attack with 15 points, Trevion Willilams had a double-double and Purdue held off rusty Penn State, 80-72, on Sunday.

It was Purdue’s first home game since Christmas Day and the first game for Penn State since Dec. 30 after four conference games were postponed because of coronavirus concerns across the league.

Myreon Jones scored a career-high 23 points for the Nittany Lions (3-5, 0-4 Big Ten), who have lost four straight while starting a run of four games in seven days. John Harrar added a career-high 14 points with 14 rebounds, and Izaiah Brockington scored 12.

Eric Hunter Jr. scored 14 points for the Boilermakers (10-5, 5-3), Williams had 13 points and 11 rebounds, Brandon Newman also had 13 points and Mason Gillis added 12.

Gillis hit a 3-pointer just before halftime to give Purdue a 33-32 lead and opened the second half with another 3 to start a 10-0 run, and the cold-shooting Nittany Lions never quite could recover.

Penn State shot 28% (13 of 47) in the second half, but more than half (7 of 26) were from 3-point range. It helped that of the Nittany Lions’ 49 rebounds, 23 were on the offensive end for 29 second-chance points.

Purdue, after starting the second half going 10 of 15 to hold a 64-48 lead with 8 minutes, 43 seconds to play, went 2 of 8 the rest of the way. But as Penn State inched closer, finally getting within four on a Jones 3-pointer with 17 seconds to go, Purdue was scoring its last 12 points from the foul line on 16 attempts. Jones had four 3s in the last 2:37.

The Boilermakers play at Ohio State on Tuesday, and the Nittany Lions are at Illinois on Tuesday and home against Rutgers on Thursday and Northwestern on Saturday.