Penn State men’s basketball upsets No. 12 Illinois in emotional victory at Rec Hall
Nights like Wednesday don’t come around often for Penn State. There are upset wins and good environments, but rarely do they come together in the storybook way they did Wednesday.
The Nittany Lions played in Rec Hall for the first time since 2015, with a crowd louder than any that has been at a men’s basketball game at the Bryce Jordan Center this year. But that doesn’t have to mean anything. That’s especially true for a team that had lost three in a row, and even more true for a team that was dealing with the tumult of losing its leading scorer with the No. 12 Illinois Fighting Illini looming.
But sometimes everything comes together, and that’s what happened for Penn State in the Return to Rec.
The Nittany Lions defeated Illinois, 90-89, in a game that could signify a shift moving forward for the program under head coach Mike Rhoades.
The game itself is one that his first iteration of Nittany Lions have played out before — one where they employ their press and frustrate a very good team to pull off an upset. But how they got there was different. For a team that has put together great 20-minute stretches but has failed to put together a full 40 minutes, Wednesday night was far from the norm.
“I’m just a super proud coach tonight,” Rhoades said. “I’m just really, really proud of our guys. I didn’t think at all during the game we were complaining. We didn’t put our chins down, we didn’t put our eyes down.”
The effort was consistent from the team throughout, but the feeling inside Rec Hall changed drastically in the final stretch of the game. The team’s 8-0 run in the final 35 seconds earned the court storming that followed and allowed the players and staff members to indulge in one of those moments — the kind many basketball players dream about when they’re growing up.
Forward Zach Hicks, who scored the final three points of the game on three free throws with 4.2 seconds, said he was at peace in that moment.
“I just kind of wanted to block out the noise and just win us the game,” Hicks said. “Nothing was really going through my mind. It was just win the game and do whatever it takes. And at the time it was for me to make three free throws, and I went out there and did that.”
As Rhoades said, it would have been easy for Hicks to miss one of those free throws to give Illinois the lead. Between the moment, the atmosphere and the opponent, the reasons to feel pressure were abundant.
But Hicks didn’t, despite how the year has gone.
“Zach, I’m just really proud of him,” Rhoades said. “Because we all know he was a heck of a shooter. And he hasn’t shot the ball like he’s capable of, and what we’ve seen in the past. But he’s worked so hard and comes into practice every day and he’s never late. He’s always shooting. … So he got his moment, and he took advantage of it.”
The moment wasn’t too big for anyone on Penn State, but that didn’t take away from the emotion of it.
Rhoades has spent this season away from his family, with his wife and two of his children staying in Virginia while his daughter finishes high school. Wednesday, he had his wife at the arena and at his postgame press conference.
He began to speak about how much it means to be playing in his home state, and veered off to discussing his family.
“It’s been really neat to be back in Pennsylvania and to be here, I love it here. I can’t wait until my family gets up here in June. That’s been the toughest thing to me. They’re here,” he said, with his face turning red and tears welling up in his eyes as he pointed to his wife and son. “I just miss them.”
But as Rhoades said, it’s no longer about what happened in Rec Hall. Yes, the program intends to play more games at Rec Hall, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. But there won’t be more games there this year.
Instead the Nittany Lions will return to the cavernous Bryce Jordan Center on Saturday to take on Indiana. It will do so in front of a crowd that isn’t heard quite as loudly and isn’t nearly as close the action as the one in Rec Hall. But it will do so with, seemingly, the entire team pulling in one direction.
“I thought we were great teammates today,” Rhoades said. “That was the one thing I said to them, the last thing I put on the board, before we went out and started the game. It was ‘be a great teammate.’ And I thought our guys did that.”
