Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades didn’t shy away from the brutal showing his team had on Thursday night against Michigan, offering truthful remarks after the Nittany Lions’ loss as injuries and everything else in between went wrong for the Nittany Lions, a team that is clearly the worst in the Big Ten.
“We’re undermanned,” Rhoades said. “Their size and length really hurt us early, and they got it going.”
“We really made it hard on ourselves early in the game and put ourselves in a hole,” Rhoades said.
While injuries have played a part in the season, Penn State lost 110-69. No one wants to hear about injuries after losing to Michigan by 41 points.
Penn State has prided itself this season on at least staying in some games. Penn State doesn’t have many wins, with just one in the Big Ten, but the last time it played Michigan, it lost 74-72 at home and had a chance to win the game at the buzzer.
“When we played them at our place, I thought we out-toughed them and outplayed them, but we didn’t win the game,” Rhoades said. “They just beat us in all facets of the game.”
Defensively, the issues are impossible to fix at this point. Penn State is a horrible defensive team and it is what it is now. While perimeter shooting hurt, going 2-20 from 3-point range, the defense was again embarrassing.
“We didn’t stop them either,” Rhoades said. “They got themselves going, and they really scored a lot of (points). I mean, they hit a bunch of threes, but they really scored around the basket and that had us leaking.”
“We knew the situation we were in,” Rhoades said. “I felt we had to make 10 to 12 threes to give ourselves a chance today, and we didn’t, but we didn’t stop them.”
As Big Ten play continues, Penn State’s path back into the win column will likely be determined by whether this team can get some stops. I don’t know if the Nittany Lions will win many more games, and it’s also fair to mention that they might not deserve to after what we saw on Thursday in Ann Arbor.