Defensive struggles, short-handedness doom La Salle against Penn State

PHILADELPHIA – “Shooting Turnovers” is a term that La Salle head coach Darris Nichols uses to describe poor shot selection that although won’t make it on the stat sheet, counts just as much as the turnovers that do.

The Explorers logged 15 turnovers in Saturday’s 83-69 loss to Penn State at Xfinity Mobile Arena, but it was the early “shooting turnovers” during a 20-0 run by Penn State that put La Salle in too deep of a hole to climb out of.

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“When the other team goes on a run, I feel like our guys are trying to fix it right away, and then that piles up on the regular turnovers,” said Nichols, whose Explorers fell to 2-2 on the season with the loss. “We had a lot of shooting turnovers, and I thought that was the difference in the game.”

Take a tough miss by Jerome Brewer Jr. at the end of the first half as an example. The redshirt junior drove and tried to finish a fadeaway floater over monstrous seven-foot Penn State freshman center Ivan Juric, and he fell to the ground after his misfire. The Nittany Lions then grabbed the rebound and quickly converted, as highly touted freshman Kayden Mingo finished a layup on the other end. Mingo finished with 14 points and a game-high seven assists.

It was play like the aforementioned one that added up over a game.

“When we played the right way, we cut into the lead,” Nichols said. “Then when guys tried to experiment through their own thing, the lead increased. It’s a teaching lesson for them, and film that we can show them. When we execute, when we do these things, we can score and have success.”

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Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades’ teams have always been known to wreak havoc on opposing offenses, whether that be at Rice, VCU, or now in Happy Valley. The Nittany Lions did that in the first half by forcing nine La Salle turnovers, which helped jump start a 20-0 run in the middle portion of the first half. At the 13:30 mark, La Salle led 12-9. Fast forward a little over five minutes,…

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Publish date : 2025-11-16 13:36:00

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