Penn State men’s basketball coach Mike Rhoades, hoarse and frustrated after the Nittany Lions’ 82-81 loss to the 15th-ranked Oregon Ducks on Sunday, said he was looking for his team to commit an intentional foul and force free throws with 2 seconds left in regulation. But the foul went uncalled, and Penn State lost its second straight Big Ten game to a ranked team. Afterward, Rhoades explained the finish through a raspy voice. He said he even alerted the officials before Oregon inbounded the ball that his team essentially planned to foul.
“We’re a pressing team, we deny the ball,” Rhoades told reporters in State College after the game. “I told the referees, we’re going to be physical before they throw it in, so if they call a foul, they call a foul. I told them.”
Penn State’s Zach Hicks made a 3-pointer with 2 seconds to pull the Nittany Lions within one. Rhoades called a timeout to set up the play to defend Oregon’s inbound. On the play, Rhoades thought Puff Johnson had two hands on Oregon’s Nate Bittle, who tipped the ball to teammate Jackson Shelstad. The plan was intentional, Rhoades said. He had a play set for the situation, which relied on Oregon shooting free throws. But Penn State didn’t get a chance to run it, as Oregon ran out the 2 seconds with possession and no called foul. It was a Hail Mary, but Rhoades was upset at the uncalled foul.
“When you put two hands on a player when he catches the ball, I thought in the rules that’s a foul, especially when you know we’re fouling,” Rhoades said. “So it should have been a foul. Two hands on the guy with the ball is an automatic foul in college basketball. Period. … Wasn’t called. That’s disappointing, but that’s life. Life ain’t fair.”
Penn State (12-5, 2-4 Big Ten) played gamely without point guard Ace Baldwin Jr., who was injured in the Nittany Lions’ 91-52 loss to Illinois on Jan. 8. Rhoades said after the game that Baldwin is “day-to-day.” Without Baldwin, Penn State ralled from a 14-point first-half deficit to lead by as many as nine in the second half. But Oregon (15-2, 4-2) outscored the Nittany Lions 19-10 over a five-minute stretch to tie the game.
The Ducks then got a jumper from Shelstad and two free throws to take a 4-point lead into the final seconds. Rhoades did not mince words regarding how Penn State gave away the second-half lead.
“We choked down the stretch,” Rhoades said. “… We hung in there, got a steal, we did things the right way when Zach hit that three, but not good enough.”
Asked later about the “We choked” comment, Rhoades both clarified and went into further detail.
“I love my team, I love these guys, I love how hard they play,” Rhoades said. “That’s on me. I take pride in how we finish games, close games especially. That’s a 60-minute game. I need to help our guys more. I choked. We choked as a team. You’ve got to win those games, man. You’ve got to find a way to win. But as proud as I am of my guys today, that was an awesome college basketball game, I’m just really pissed that we lost. I didn’t come here to lose. And you’ve got to go through this stuff to get where you want to go, and this hurts. This is a game we could have had. Just how it goes. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. That’s a game we could have won, we should have won, we didn’t win.”
Freddie Dilione V led Penn State with a career-high 21 points, making four of six 3-pointers, and Nick Kern Jr. played a strong game with 19 points and eight rebounds. Kern also took a team-high 20 shots.
Up next
Penn State continues its stretch of Big Ten games vs. ranked teams Wednesday when it visits No. 16 Michigan State. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network.
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