After falling to Ohio State earlier in the week, the Gophers men’s basketball team continued their road trip to Penn State hoping for a quick rebound to get back into the win column. Unable to turn their luck around, Minnesota shouldered a second consecutive loss.
The Gophers ran into first-half issues against the Nittany Lions, scoring just 19 points on 33.3% shooting from the floor. Penn State had a very similar second half that Ohio State did, and ran away with the game for a 67-46 win.
Penn State and Minnesota met for the second time in just five days Thursday due to a cancellation in the middle of January. After Minnesota took the first meeting to end a five-game win streak, the Nittany Lions took the second meeting.
In their last match-up, redshirt senior Eric Curry had a career night and dominated Penn State for a career-high 22 points. He went 0-6 in the game and scored just one point. That meant scoring needed to come from elsewhere.
Sophomore Jamison Battle took over the Gophers’ scoring problems and dropped a team-high 16 points including three deep balls. Outside of Battle, there wasn’t much other production coming from Minnesota.
The Gophers finally started to get more shots to drop, and even hit four of five from deep in just over a three minute stretch. That didn’t last long as Minnesota ended the game shooting 32.1% from the field and 36.8% from deep.
Senior Payton Willis matched his game total from Minnesota’s previous loss with the Gophers’ first five points of the game. For the next five minutes, nothing was dropping for the Gophers and the Nittany Lions went on a 10-0 run to take a 16-5 lead and force a timeout from head coach Ben Johnson.
Senior Eylijah Stephens and Battle came alive for a brief stint following that timeout. The two scored Minnesota’s next 11 points to cut the deficit to just five.
That was the closest the game got, and the Gophers found themselves on the wrong side of yet another double-digit loss.
Minnesota is back at home Saturday as they host Northwestern in its first game of the regular season.
