Michigan basketball hits new low point after getting hammered by Penn State, 83-61

Michigan basketball's offense didn't have an answer outside of Jett Howard.

Its defense didn't have an answer for anybody.

It was a recipe for a blowout in University Park, Pennsylvania, where Penn State hammered Michigan, 83-61, on Sunday behind a barrage of 3-pointers. It's the Nittany Lions' largest margin of victory over U-M, surpassing the 18-point win (70-52) on Jan. 2, 1999.

It was also new low point in a season that hasn't gone the way Juwan Howard and company had hoped. The loss is just Michigan's second by double figures all year, but the fifth in the past seven games, as they fall to 0-9 in Quad I games with the calendar set to turn to February.

"With the 3s that were being made and then getting points in the paint, we didn't do a good job of stopping them,” coach Juwan Howard told reporters after the game. “I will go back and watch film. I will also go back and look myself in the mirror and say it starts with me. I can do better.”

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The Wolverines (11-10, 5-5 Big Ten) got a welcomed boost when the freshman Howard, who missed Thursday's loss to Purdue with an ankle injury, successfully made it through warmups and was slated in the starting lineup. But even with another stellar effort from Howard (21 points, 8 of 13 shooting), U-M didn't have nearly enough on either end.

Jalen Pickett nearly recorded a triple-double with 25 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, Seth Lundy added 22 points and seven rebounds, Andrew Funk scored 19 points with seven rebounds and Michael Henn added 10 points for Penn State (14-7, 5-5).

Kobe Bufkin had eight points and six rebounds for U-M while Hunter Dickinson had a season-low six points and two rebounds.

Penn State rips off 33-6 run

Howard scored 18 points in the first 15 minutes of the game as Michigan trailed, 31-30, with 4:34 to play in the first half. But by the time he made his next bucket — which was just less than 10 minutes of game time later — Michigan was down by 25 points.

PSU had a game-defining 33-6 run from the end of the first to the early portion of the second half because they simply wouldn't miss — and they had a number of wide open looks.

It started with a 3-pointer from Henn at the top of the key before Lundy got a shooter's touch on a long 3-pointer of his own — bouncing straight off the back of the iron, up in the air and through the hoop.

“When that one 3 bounced all the way up and you see the timing of that ball, I was begging, 'Please bounce out. Let's get the rebound,’” Howard said. “It stayed up there for like 3½ seconds, if I was counting, and then it bounced in. I'm like, 'Wow. Is it one of those days?'"

Henn hit a 3-pointer on the next trip down before Funk got cooking. The transfer from Bucknell hit a 3-pointer from the wing off a pass from Pickett, buried a deep heat-check 3-pointer from the top of the key and then picked off a Dickinson cross-court pass and took it the other way for an and-one layup as part of PSU's 18-0 run to end the first half.

PSU lost no momentum at half time. Lundy hit a 3-pointer from the corner, Henn hit a layup and then after a Pickett miss Funk and Lundy would hit consecutive 3-pointers to force Howard to use his second to last timeout.

In total, Penn State went 11-for-12 from the field in eight minutes and 10 seconds of game time.

Two stars going at it

Howard was on fire to open the game. After Penn State scored four straight points out of the gate, Howard hit consecutive 3-pointers — the first from the right wing, the second from the left — to give U-M a 6-4 lead.

Penn State's Pickett responded with a jumper, a 3-pointer and a finish in the paint over Bufkin as he scored nine of PSU's first 11 to take an 11-6 lead. Later, Pickett hit a fadeaway after he got the mismatch with Dickinson to go up 16-8.

Howard then drove to the basket and finished in traffic on the ensuing possession, hit a fadeaway off of one foot on the next and then hit a deep 3-pointer to cut U-M's deficit to 16-15.

Pickett responded with a long ball of his own and later an and-one layup to make it 26-19. Pickett opened the game 6-for-6 for 14 points while Howard was 7-for-7 for 18 points before his first miss with 3:42 left in the opening half.

"He's always a matchup problem," Jett Howard told reporters of Pickett. "They're always trying to find weak links on defense and go at them ... once we help off Pickett, they kick it off to those (other)guys who can all shoot. That was tough and then we just weren't bodying out on screens."

Where to turn

After Michigan's loss to Purdue, coach Juwan Howard had a number of positives to take away.

His team battled the No. 1 team in the land for most of the game without its best offensive weapon—− he saw heart, which he said is atop every coaches wish list. That much wasn't the case on Sunday, with U-M coming up flalt in most regards.

Penn State shot better than 54% from the floor (31-for-57) and was above 60% when it had a 30-point lead with 10 minutes to play. PSU, which entered as the second-best 3-point shooting team in the Big Ten, shot 43% from deep (13-for-30) and after they had just six assists on 26 buckets in the first meting, PSU assisted on 20 of its 31 baskets.

Contact Tony Garcia at apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @realtonygarcia.

Next up: Wildcats

Matchup: Michigan (11-10, 5-5 Big Ten) at Northwestern (15-5, 6-3).

Tipoff: 7 p.m. Thursday; Welsh-Ryan Arena, Evanston, Illinois.

TV/radio: ESPN2; WJR-AM (950); WTKA-AM (1050).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball hits new low point in 83-61 loss to Penn State