Penn State Shoots Lights Out, Eliminates Texas A&M From NCAA Tournament

Penn State finished with a tournament-high 13 3-pointers made en route to a victory against the Aggies at Wells Fargo Arena.

The No. 13 has always been linked with the dark aura. People often aren't finding luck when No.s 1 and 3 appear as partners. 

Texas A&M Men's Basketball got a front-row seat to the unluckiness of No. 13’s wrath against Penn State Thursday evening at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa. The Nittany Lions drained 13 triples through 40 minutes of play to punch their ticket to the Round of 32 with a 79-56 win. 

And the Aggies? They were unlucky—a season of promise knocked away by the life of the 3-pointer.

“They played incredibly well,” A&M coach Buzz Williams said postgame, “and we played incredibly poor.”

The A&M basketball program that took the court Thursday night was not the A&M basketball program found in College Station. The logo stitched on the jerseys read Aggies, but an imposter took the place of a roster that finished second in the Southeastern Conference and gave fits to high-profile programs like Alabama and Tennessee in the regular season. 

En route to its most conference wins since 1923, the Aggies always played to an opponent's strengths. When a team was physically intimidating inside the paint, A&M delivered a punch right back. When a program loved to create mismatches on the perimeter, the Aggies were the ones making uncomfortable plays. 

None of that was on display against a Nittany Lions program that laid out their cards a week prior in Chicago for the Big Ten Championship. Penn State ranked 13th in the nation in 3-point shooting percentage (38.4 percent). It ranked sixth in 3-pointers per game (10.2 attempts). 

The recipe for victory was there. The execution wasn't. 

"I think we were completely stressed out in what they were doing offensively, and we were not sharp," Williams said. "We were not sharp in our help on #22 (Penn State guard Jalen Pickett) nor our coverage on the weak side.

"We made some adjustments at half. At times it was OK. They are a good defensive team in regards to not fouling, not allowing you to get to the paint.

“But our problem was defensively.”

The defense was the Aggies' ace during the regular season. It was their death sentence against Penn State's backcourt. Pickett, a first-team All-American that shot 38.5 percent from behind the arc during the year, scored 19 points. Andrew Funk, who led the Nittany Lions in 3-point shooting (42 percent), proved why he was the deadliest man from downtown with eight 3-points and 27 total points. 

Penn State shot 59 percent (13-of-22) from the 3-point line. Points piled up. Adjustments weren't made. At one point, the Aggies trailed by as much as 23. But while Penn State continued to shoot deep, A&M remained conservative for the easy two. 

"They're pretty complimentary at what they do," senior guard Dexter Dennis said. "I think that showed tonight. They took advantage of us in a lot of situations. They had us rotating a lot. Pretty much the whole game." 

There's a phrase in basketball; "live or die by the 3." Penn State thrived. A&M died. The Aggies only shot 29.4 percent from the 3-point line. They fared about the same from the field, making 33.9 percent of shots. 

Two weeks after upsetting Alabama at Reed Arena in the season finale, the Aggies will pack up their lockers and head back there to watch the remainder of the tournament. Williams, who likely was in the running for AP Coach of the Year, will turn to the film room to find answers as to what went wrong. 

Players like Tyrece "Boots" Radford and Andre Gordon will have to decide what their futures entail. Dennis, a fifth-year transfer from Whitcha State, is the only Aggie that won't be eligible to return. That doesn't mean the roster will take a hit via the transfer portal. 

The No. 13 has been synonymously linked with bad luck. For A&M, luck wasn't the problem. 

They were. 

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