Penn State 79, Illinois 76: Illini one-and-done in Big Ten tournament again

Oh for three? Really?

Illinois couldn’t beat Penn State in Champaign, couldn’t beat the Nittany Lions in State College and — going one-and-done in the Big Ten tournament for the second straight year — couldn’t beat them Thursday at the United Center.

Not Purdue. Not Michigan State. This is Penn State we’re talking about — in basketball, no less.

What a dissatisfying season it has been for the Illini (20-12), who, after losing 79-76, will head to the NCAA Tournament without having established any sort of rhythm or an offensive identity, at least not a positive one.

Will it be one more game and done for Brad Underwood’s team? It would be utterly unsurprising. The Illini likely will receive a No. 8 or 9 seed from the selection committee and will take the floor in the Big Dance with absolutely no mojo working.

Not that Underwood — who, as recently as the start of the week, contended the Illini were getting ready to play their best basketball — would publicly agree with the above assessment.

“I don’t know, we were 25 down to Purdue in their building and found enough offense [to rally in a 76-71 loss],” he said. “We’ve beaten UCLA. We’ve beaten Texas. We’ve beaten a lot of good teams in this league. I think there’s plenty [offense] there.”

But Underwood describes his program as being built on the question: How do you win even when the ball isn’t going in the basket?

Too often, the talented Illini are unable to figure that out. They were the worst three-point shooting team in the conference. They don’t have a pure point guard and regularly get bogged down in halfcourt sets, over-relying on one-on-one bailouts. And there doesn’t seem to be any improvement taking place.

Oh, and the wins against UCLA and Texas? They were in November and December, long enough ago to be completely irrelevant aside from how influential they are on Selection Sunday.

A bright spot against Penn State was seeing 6-10 Coleman Hawkins stand in the lane with his back to the basket for a change, which led to three late-first-half buckets as the Illini finished strong and then three early-second-half buckets as the outcome began to look promising.

Where had this been all season?

“I should be doing that,” Hawkins said, “and I haven’t really done a good job of posting up all year.”

Maybe his coach just didn’t make him? The Illini never got back to Hawkins on the block as Penn State (20-12) turned a 46-40 deficit into a 69-59 advantage. 

What a puzzler, Illinois’ repeated inability to withstand Penn State’s strengths. The Nittany Lions are an experienced, older team, which is not insignificant. They have Jalen Pickett, who torched the Illini for 61 points in two previous games but had only 12 this time. They have a marksman in Andrew Funk, who drained six threes, some of them painfully wide open.

“We’ve never guarded Funk,” Underwood said.

It’s too late now.

It’s just Penn State, people, a team that needed a “W” in the worst way as it arrived in Chicago very much on the NCAA bubble. Instead of an Illinois-Northwestern rubber match on Friday, we’ll see PSU take a swing at the Wildcats with a spot in the semifinals on the line.

The Illini will have a chance to look inward, which might or might not do them some good.

“It’s finding a bit of consistency, it’s finding a little bit of positive momentum, it’s creating an energy [from] young guys that keep growing,” Underwood said. “I’m excited. This team can go as long and as far as they want to. We’ve proven that.”

That’s highly debatable. The same old problems persist, and it is March, after all.

“We’ve beaten great teams,” Underwood said, “and we are one.”

Not really, though. Not if we’re being honest about it.