Penn State men’s basketball team had to miss out on watching their football counterpart play their first-round CFB Playoff game, but they made up for it by taking down the Drexel Dragons on Saturday afternoon from the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Drexel came out of the gates hot and showed no signs of intimidation against a team ranked much higher than them. They wanted the outset of this game to be dictated on their terms, and they got their wish. Penn State coughed up the ball multiple times in the opening minutes, which led to run-outs and easy points in transition for the Dragons. In the opening eight minutes, Drexel shot 63.6 percent as a team compared to just 38.5 percent for Penn State, racing out to an early lead.
The game started to turn in the Nittany Lions’ favor when Ace Baldwin Jr. snaked his way into the lane and drew a foul to convert an and-one. Immediately on the other end, Kachi Nzeh emphatically blocked a dunk attempt at the rim- his first of multiple solid defensive plays in the half. Some great play on both ends of the court from Yanic Konan Niederhauser and offensive contributions from Nick Kern Jr. and Zach Hicks allowed PSU to find their footing. Suffocating team defense down the stretch of the first half allowed them to establish and grow their lead, one they would never relinquish.
Yame Butler, Drexel’s second-leading scorer on the season, had a really rough first half shooting the ball. He missed all three of his shots from distance- a common theme in the first 20 minutes for both teams- with multiple being as wide-open as anybody was all afternoon. He finished the first half with just six points despite playing 18 minutes and was an active contributor to the scoreboard, being in Penn State’s favor when going into the locker room. Yanic Konan Neiderhauser and Kern Jr. both had 11 points in the first half to lead the way for the Nittany Lions.
Coming out of the break, neither team was very interested in playing defense aside from one pogo-stick block by Konan Neiderhauser. In the first four minutes of the second half, PSU poured in ten points, and Drexel scored nine on their own.
Baldwin Jr. got the scoring started by hitting the Nittany Lions’ first three-pointer of the game. That was immediately nullified by a Kobe MaGee three on the other end. Freddie Dilione V and Jason Drake traded nifty pull-ups in the paint that led to buckets. A couple of baskets from Puff Johnson, brother of Brooklyn Net, Cam Johnson, allowed Penn State to extend their lead to double-digits.
Drexel’s Kevon Vanderhorst, who only played four minutes in the first half and was held scoreless, provided the jolt Drexel needed to start fighting back. He sent his defender tumbling to the court on a spin move that he parlayed into two points. On the next offensive possession, he found big man Ralph Akuta for a thunderous dunk that would cut the Penn State lead to just five points. He also canned two shots from a distance to stop any temporary momentum PSU could muster.
Baldwin Jr. found himself in foul trouble early in the half and had to be subbed out, which directly led to Drexel going on their run. As soon as he checked back in with a little over 10 minutes remaining in the game, Penn State was functional on offense again. PSU’s leading scorer and playmaker, Baldwin Jr., showcased all of his offensive talents to help Penn State maintain their now small lead.
Asked about the offense stymying without Baldwin Jr., PSU head coach Mike Rhoades said, “[Baldwin Jr.] is the head of the snake, and he does so much when the ball is in his hands. In the first half, when we took him out, [Nick Kern Jr.] got us going there, and it was a great lift.”
“But in the second half,” Rhoades continued. “When we took Ace out, you know that is the guy we run a lot of stuff through. He makes plays for his teammates, and when you do not have that, I just thought we got a little stagnant today. I did not think we played with great pace on offense today into our next action. I thought we did that down the stretch, but Ace was (back) in there, and he gets us going, so something we really got to work on moving forward.”
Once Penn State locked in defensively, they forced Drexel into a handful of mental mistakes that aided in their own demise. Two shot clock violations, two airballs, and a couple of selfish grenades from the Dragons took them out of the rhythm they had established. With PSU struggling to score down the stretch, these miscues really did Drexel in.
Still, the Dragons found themselves with the chance to cut the lead to just four points at the charity stripe. Kobe MaGee, Drexel’s leading scorer, missed the first of his one-and-one free throws, which kept the PSU lead at 6. Some nice two-man game from Baldwin Jr. and Yanic Konan Niederhauser led to a bucket on the other end.
Then Konan Neiderhauser skied in for a block that led to a Baldwin Jr. layup in transition, which made it a double-digit lead once again and officially put this game out of reach for the home team, Drexel Dragons. When rubber needed to meet the road, Penn State danced with who brought them in order to notch their tenth win of the year—a number they did not reach last season until January 31st.
Recollecting on that, Mike Rhoades joked, “Thanks for reminding me!”
