Stevens' big 2nd half leads Penn State over Alabama

STATE COLLEGE — When Pat Chambers needs his best player to pick up the pace on defense, he doesn’t need to ask.

Lamar Stevens just does his thing.

Penn State’s leading scorer scored 13 of his 18 points in the second half, grabbed 11 rebounds and added five blocks and two steals to lead Penn State to a 73-71 win over Alabama on Saturday.

“The fact that your best player wants to play defense at all is fantastic,” Chambers said. “He became a dominant player the last four minutes.”

Curtis Jones scored 18 points, Myreon Jones added 17 and Mike Watkins grabbed 10 rebounds for Penn State (9-2), which trailed 40-34 at halftime.

Before that, Alabama took its biggest lead of the afternoon, 52-43, on a Herbert Jones layup with 14 minutes, 53 seconds left.

But Penn State came back with a 14-5 run that featured six points from Curtis Jones and a 3-pointer from Myles Dread that made it 57-57 just over three minutes later.

“We definitely looked sluggish in the first half,” Chambers said. “We were trying to catch up to them, and we’ve got speed ourselves.”

Galin Smith reclaimed the lead for Alabama with a pair of tough inside baskets, but Penn State got nine points from Stevens over the next 9:58. They fueled a 16-10 run to the finish for Penn State before Watkins came up with a block and steal on back-to-back Alabama possessions with less than a minute to play.

The Tide had a chance with 5 seconds left to in-bound the ball but couldn’t get off a clean shot.

James Bolden scored 15 points, and Alex Reese added 12 for Alabama (4-5).

“I thought our guys gave an effort deserving to win for 32 minutes, and we just kind of ran out of juice,” Alabama coach Matt Oats said.