Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1542734
4 2 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 6 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M P e n n S ta te h ea d c o a c h M i ke Rhoades trudged toward the po- dium in the Bryce Jordan Center's media room after a gut-wrenching 74- 72 loss to No. 2 Michigan on Jan. 6 — a game in which Penn State had put itself in position to pull off one of the season's biggest upsets, only to see a desperation three-pointer by redshirt junior guard Freddie Dilione V clank off the rim at the final buzzer. The circumstances in which it oc- curred — his youthful team having lost four of its five prior games and sur- prisingly, significantly shorthanded — made the moment that much more frustrating. Kayden Mingo, the Nittany Lions' leading scorer with 14.9 points per game to go along with 4.5 assists and 3.9 re- bounds, was sidelined due to an injury. Rhoades later revealed that the fresh- man guard had suffered a broken nose at practice the day before — a setback that required surgery — and wasn't even able to attend the game, let alone provide his on-court contributions to a Penn State team in desperate need of them. Already perilously thin on Big Ten- ready ball handling, and inexperienced in part because of Mingo's outsized role, the Nittany Lions responded well enough to take the Wolverines to the wire. Just not enough to secure the win. "When a guy goes down, you rally around them. The way you help him get on the mend is to play really hard. Play hard for him and play hard for each other, and I thought our guys did that," Rhoades said. "We told Freddie, he's probably going to play a lot and handle the ball a lot. "Everyone has got to step up. You don't cancel the game because some- body gets hurt. The next man steps up. And I thought we had a lot of guys step up." Rhoades declined to speculate on the MEN'S BASKETBALL WOUNDED LIONS A costly injury forces Penn State to improvise at midseason NAT E BAU E R | N AT E . B A U E R @ O N 3 . C O M Freshman point guard Kayden Mingo has been the Lions' most productive player this year, but he missed the Nittany Lions' games against Michigan, Purdue and UCLA after suffering a broken nose in practice. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL