Penn State Basketball Needs to be Aggressive, but Foul Much Less Than It Has

There's a difference between being aggressive and out of control and being an aggressive defensive team that can get stops at a very high level on the defensive side of the court.

Unfortunately for Penn State on Sunday night against Pittsburgh, it felt like they were the former. Penn State turned the ball over too much, committed 26 personal fouls, and ultimately couldn't do enough on the defensive end to come away with a win against a decent Pittsburgh team, despite attempting 14 more free throws with 36. 

There were times when Penn State was just all out of sorts on the defensive side, specifically in the paint, allowing 48 points to Pittsburgh in the paint.

Penn State is going to have to be much better on all fronts if it wants to be a better team than it currently is. There are certainly some better signs than we've seen in years past, but the reality is that Penn State still isn't a great team by any means. 

This team can be above average at times, and I have some hope it will be, but we all know it isn't an elite team in the Big Ten. For Penn State to be the team it wants to be, it's going to have to buy into what head coach Mike Rhoades wants it to do, and part of that is playing aggressive, disciplined basketball. The one word there that Rhoades really touched on was discipline.

“The greatest warriors in the history of the world. Right? They were savages, they were warriors, (and) they had a level of discipline that people still talk about them to this day,” Rhoades said, per the PSU Collegian.

“We want to be an aggressive physical team, and we want to play to a great pace. We want to attack people, but you always have to have a level of discipline in the moment that it's needed, and we just didn't have that enough today.”

Like I said above, being a disciplined team and an out-of-control team are completely different things, even if both teams are aggressive.

Penn State has to get into a position where it's showing that it can be aggressive, but also not foul too much. I also think some of the problem is that its paint defense is below average, so that's ultimately going to lead to more fouls underneath the basket.

Penn State's POA defense was also very below average, something that's going to have to be fixed as it continues to try to improve on the defensive side of things.

There's still time for a lot of this to get figured out, so I'm excited to see what that looks like soon.