Penn State vs. Texas NCAA Tournament predictions: Can the Nittany Lions make it to the Sweet 16?

Penn State will try to make the Sweet 16 Saturday night with a game against the Texas Longhorns. The Nittany Lions will take them on in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Des Moines, Iowa. Here are some final thoughts, predictions and analysis ahead of the Nittany Lions’ matchup with the Longhorns in their first second round NCAA Tournament game since 2001.

Don’t turn it over

This has been Penn State’s formula all season and the Nittany Lions will have to lean on it again Saturday night. Texas excels at forcing turnovers, earning them on 22.6% of their possessions, good for 19th in the country. That being said, that’s where Texas A&M excelled too and it didn’t stop the Nittany Lions from having success. The Longhorns, of course, are essentially a better version of the Aggies in that regard.

Still, Penn State will once again have the best player on the court once again and that always seems to matter more in March. It helps that Jalen Pickett also has the ball in his hands more than anyone else on the team, and never gives it up. He’s going to be at the controls for the Nittany Lions for as many of the 40 minutes as he can and odds are he’s not going to give Texas extra possessions in that time.

Make Texas adjust

Penn State had success on Sunday because it played how it wanted to. There was never a moment in the game where it felt like the Aggies were in control or playing the game on their terms. While they chose not to adjust, surely Texas will. Still, the Nittany Lions need to put them in position to do that in the first place. That is not breaking news, but it’s still important in large part because they are a difficult matchup for any team, let alone one with less than 48 hours to gameplan for them.

Texas is likely to try to get the ball out of Pickett’s hands in a variety of ways, but that leaves the threat of giving Penn State’s 3-point shooters space around the arc to fire open looks. The best guess for their adjustment will be not giving Pickett the matchup he wants by fighting over screens and leaving their best defenders on him to make it difficult for him to get to his spots. Of course, he’s good enough that it might not work, but it’s better than employing A&M’s strategy of giving him whatever he wanted.

Slow down the pace

If this looks similar to what I wrote about A&M, it’s because it is. There are plenty of similarities between the teams and it continues with how well the Longhorns do in transition. They’re looking to get defensive rebounds and immediately push to the other end of the court for a quick transition bucket. Part of that is because they have the speed, size and athleticism to excel at it, and part of it is because they aren’t as good at scoring in their half court offense.

They’ll try to get Marcus Carr going toward the rim and give their bigs opportunities to finish, but it will be up to Penn State to force them to get those opportunities in more condensed, 5-on-5 situations rather than in transition. That’s going to be the Nittany Lions’ biggest defensive challenge, but they can help themselves by doing what they do best — making shots. It’s much harder to run a fast break off a made shot because of the time it takes to take the ball out of bounds and inbound it. That would allow Penn State to get its defense set and force Texas to play slow.

Final predictions

Penn State 72, Texas 71: The Nittany Lions once again enter the game as underdogs, but this feels like it’s going to be a close game. They’re going to make their shots from deep and the Longhorns are going to run the floor well to get easy buckets. This might come down to the final possession, but I’ll take Penn State to make it to the Sweet 16.

MVP: Jalen Pickett. Thursday I said Andrew Funk would get going and hit shots from deep, and he hit eight. Saturday it’s going to be about Pickett more evenly distributing those looks across the board to Funk, Seth Lundy, Myles Dread and others.

Good gamble: I went back and forth on this, but I’ll go with Penn State +5.5 instead of the moneyline. I expect the game to be close, and as you can tell I think the Nittany Lions could win, but sometimes it’s better to be safe than sorry. The Nittany Lions covering is far from a guarantee but I like it more than anything else on the board.

Quotable

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry on watching Jalen Pickett play for the first time

“The first time was when I got the job, watching him on the internet, trying to pull up tape, pull up film as we were recruiting him. They played a lot of pick-and-rolls early on when he was there. His vision was what stood out as a passer. He was such a good passer. You could see that. That really stood out to me first and foremost, and then the more you talked to him, you understood why he had great vision, because of his ability to see the game, his ability to think the game.

“I’ve said it multiple times, like, we lucked into him being able to score in the post. We didn’t utilize him in that way until midway through the season last year. It just kinda happened organically, and then I was like, huh? Hey, dummy, why don’t we do this a little bit more? Because he’s pretty good down there. I’m glad it happened because it’s worked out. “