Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/260491
■ | COMEBACK KID he very mention seems to make D.J. Newbill physically uncom- fortable. Illinois. Minnesota. States in the Midwest, yes. But also the opponents that Penn State faced in back-to-back games early in the Big Ten season – opponents that com- pletely flummoxed the Nittany Lions' red- shirt junior guard. He's past that now, of course, having earned Big Ten Co-Player of the Week honors on Feb. 3 for his outstanding per- formances against Ohio State and Purdue, in which he averaged 22 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists in a pair of Penn State vic- tories. The first Nittany Lion to be so hon- ored since Talor Battle received a similar nod in January 2011, Newbill quietly de- flected attention from his own performance to the teammates who helped him get there. "It's good to get noticed and recognized, but I've gotta give credit to my team," he said. "It doesn't show up in the stat sheet how many great screens get set, or how many times I'm running the break and Tim [Frazier] or one of the guys finds me for easy layups and stuff like that. I'm just giving credit to my teammates." Even with his teammates helping out, those accomplishments didn't come out of nowhere. There were some struggles leading up to Newbill's recent surge. Specifically, there was a 39-minute stretch spanning two games that – in Newbill's mind, at least – played a significant role in the Nittany Lions' 0-6 start vs. Big Ten competition. The first, a trip to Champaign, Ill., for the first conference game of the new year, saw Newbill enter sporting averages of 18.8 points and 5.9 rebounds per game and a solid 43 percent shooting rate from 3-point range. His scoring average was second in the Big Ten, and with Penn State having notched a 9-4 record in the non- conference season, its outlook for the rest of the year was still reasonably bright. But in that Saturday matinee against the Illini, everything seemed to unravel rapidly. First, Newbill was hit with a questionable technical foul and ejection at the 8:38 mark in the second half. The Nittany Lions were trailing by nine points at the time, and he was forced to watch on an arena TV as his teammates went on to suffer a 20-point blowout loss. Newbill finished the game with seven points on 2-of-8 shooting. The foul seemed strange given Newbill's genial on- and off-the-court persona, and head coach Patrick Chambers would go on to subtly question the officials' call, blaming it on a poor viewing angle. "It definitely affected the game. That's our first- or second-leading scorer, de- pending on what week it is, and you're taking him out of the game. So it's a tough call," Chambers said. "I think they had a poor angle. Whatever they saw on film, they had a poor angle. "We have a different camera angle, and it was very obvious it should have been a double technical, but that's not the case, and you can't worry about it now. You've gotta move on." Chambers might have moved on quickly, but after being held to the lowest scoring total of his Penn State career, Newbill didn't find it quite so easy to refocus. When the Nittany Lions welcomed Min- nesota to the Bryce Jordan Center four days later, he got in quick foul trouble and was unable to score even a single point in the Lions' devastating 68-65 loss. His final line – 0 for 2 from the floor, no M E N ' S B A S K E T B A L L After an uncharacteristic two-game slump, D.J. Newbill leads a Nittany Lion revival T