“The Penn State men’s basketball team couldn’t get the monkey off its back last night as the Nittany Lions (7-14, 1-7 Big Ten) lost their 28th straight Big Ten road game. This time in Bloomington, falling 68-63 to the Indiana Hoosiers (10-9, 5-3).
The Lions fell for the 12th straight time at Indiana, but this was the closest game at Assembly Hall in Penn State history. Penn State has also lost 11 of its last 13 games overall.
“The Lions seemed to shake off the beating Wisconsin delivered on Saturday and played one of their better defensive games of the season. Penn State’s forwards held Indiana’s highly touted freshman center D.J. White to just six points on 2-for-3 shooting. The Lions double-teamed the freshman-of-the-year candidate all night, but the defensive strategy came back to burn them late in the game.
“With a little under two minutes to go, Indiana fed the ball into White — who was immediately doubled — and he kicked it out to little-used senior guard Ryan Tapak, who drilled his first 3-pointer of the season to put the Hoosiers up seven.
“‘The kid [Tapak] hit a big shot for them,’ Penn State coach Ed Dechellis said on the Penn State Radio Network. ‘Sometimes you just have to pick your poision. We were trying to play the percentages.’…”