It wasn’t pretty. In fact, most of the time it was down right ugly. Chris Collins said as much in the postgame press conference.
“I didn’t think it was a beautiful game to watch, but I thought it was an incredibly hard-played game by both teams,” the Northwestern coach said. “Neither team really could get anything going offensively. Certainly we couldn’t.”
But it was also the most thrilling game of the Big Ten Tournament thus far.
After some back and forth, No. 10 Penn State managed to tie things up with the No. 2 Wildcats in the closing minute of regulation, ultimately forcing the first overtime of the tournament. The Nittany Lions got ahead early in the extra period, and despite gaining the lead momentarily, Northwestern ultimately fell to their conference foe, 67-65.
It was a nail-biter to the very end.
With just seven seconds left and down by three, Northwestern’s Brooks Barnhizer brought in the rebound on a missed Seth Lundy free throw and gave the ball to teammate Boo Buie. Penn State’s Andrew Funk fouled Buie with 4.7 seconds left to send him to the line, where he missed the second shot.
Ty Berry pulled in the rebound for Northwestern but was caught up briefly by Penn State defenders before kicking it out to Chase Audige. He put up a three-pointer at the buzzer that just didn’t fall right, ending the Wildcats’ title hopes.
That was the story of the night, as neither team could get a shot to fall right. Northwestern finished 21 of 66 for 31.8% shooting but gave up just four turnovers. Penn State’s stat line was similar, shooting 21 of 51 for 41.2%.
“I’ll give credit to Penn State,” Buie said. “They did a good job of trying to get the ball out of Chase and I’s hands. I think, just as a team, including Chase and I, we just didn’t make shots overall. We missed a couple shots that we usually make, and if we had made those, we would have gained a little bit of a lead, and things probably would have went our way.
“We’ve been a team who hasn’t turned the ball over a bunch. We just weren’t making shots tonight.”
That was one battle Northwestern did win – turnovers. While only giving up four, the Wildcats forced 15 on Penn State and scored 23 points to the Nittany Lions two.
“Again, we forced 15 turnovers tonight,” said Collins. “We’ve never really been a team that forced a lot of turnovers until this year. A lot of it has to do with him adding a little grit and aggressiveness to our D.”
Buie finished with a game-high 16 points, going 6 of 17 with a 2 of 7 rate from the three. Barnhizer earned a double-double by scoring 15 points and pulling in 11 rebounds.
“It means a lot,” said Barnhizer when asked about his growth as a sophomore. “I just try to play hard when I’m out there. It’s just kind of how the game went. I kind of stayed in there a lot. It’s important, but ultimately we didn’t win. So it’s kind of like really the main thing that I was kind of worried about.
“It’s cool to see, but we’ve still got to do a lot more.”
In the first half, both teams struggled to make a shot. Both teams combined to make just seven shots on 21 attempts in the first ten minutes of the game, with many minutes going by between scores. At the half, Northwestern held a narrow 26-25 advantage. There were 13 lead changes in the 45 minutes of game time.
Lundy led Penn State with a matching game-high 16 points, while Jalen Pickett added 15, Funk added 14 and Kanye Cary finished with 11. Pickett also had nine rebounds.
Penn State with face No. 3 Indiana on Saturday, who beat No. 6 Maryland in the night’s finale, 70-60. Northwestern will make the short trip back to Evanston as they await their fate on Selection Sunday. The Wildcats and Nittany Lions have both likely earned invitations to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
“What I want them to do now is, when they find out on Sunday, we need to go, and we need to be loose,” said Collins. “We need to play with reckless abandon. We need to be locked in. We need to play our defense. We need to shoot our shots. There’s no reason for us to be tight, to be on our heels in any way.”
