Michigan State basketball: Getting to know Penn State

Michigan State basketball is hosting Penn State on Thursday evening and here’s everything you need to know about the Nittany Lions.

Michigan State basketball resumes Big Ten play on Thursday night against Penn State. The Spartans (8-5, 0-2) welcome the Nittany Lions (7-6, 1-1) to the Breslin Center in an extremely important matchup.

Before the game gets here, let’s take a look at Penn State and see how they’ve been doing this year.

Penn State season in review

Penn State is off to as rough of a start as any Big Ten team is. They come into this matchup at 7-6 on the season and 1-1 in conference play. Penn State started the year hot winning their first four games before dropping six of their next nine. The Nittany Lions also only have one good win this year against Ohio State. Other than that, all of Penn State’s wins are against mid major opponents.

As a result, the metrics have not been very kind to Penn State this season. The most popular computer metrics, the NET and KenPom rankings, both have Penn State ranked dead last in the Big Ten. The NET has Penn State at No. 115 and KenPom has them at No. 104 in the country.

Penn State is riding a two-game winning streak, so their confidence won’t be completely shot when they come to East Lansing. Those two wins however are against Le Moyne and Rider, so this short win streak really doesn’t hold much value. A win against MSU however, would obviously do wonders for their season.

Key players to watch

Penn State doesn’t have too many guys that can score in bunches. They are led by sophomore guard Kanye Clary who averages 18.2 points per game. Their only other double-digit scorer is senior guard Ace Baldwin Jr. at 13.6 points per game. The only other player to watch out for is Qudus Wahab who nearly averages a double-double with 9.9 points and 8.8 rebounds per game.

The Nittany Lions are an OK 3-point shooting team at 32 percent this season. They, however, only have one shooter above 40 percent and that’s Jameel Brown at 57.9%. He only plays 8.0 minutes a game and is only one game back from an injury, so I don’t expect too much from him.

The one thing I like about Penn State is their balanced scoring. They have eight guys averaging at least 4.6 points per game, showing that they have many capable scorers.

This is a big game for MSU, even if the opponent isn’t that great. We are winless in the Big Ten and need to change that fast. If we play our style of ball, I have no doubts we will come away with a win.