Indiana is back on the road Sunday afternoon against Penn State at the Palestra in Philadelphia. The Nittany Lions are 12-2 overall and 2-1 in Big Ten play.
Sunday’s game will tip at noon ET on BTN:
Indiana will try to win its fourth straight game this weekend when it travels to Philadelphia to play Penn State at the Palestra.
The Nittany Lions own a pair of top 50 KenPom wins – Purdue and Northwestern – but played a non-conference schedule ranked 358th in Division I, according to KenPom. Picked to finish 17th in the Big Ten, the Nittany Lions are one of the surprise teams in the conference as the regular season nears the halfway point.
The Hoosiers, meanwhile, are still searching for their first Quad 1 win, and Sunday is an opportunity against a Penn State squad currently ranked 41st in the NET. The Nittany Lions swept Indiana in the regular season in 2023-24 before the Hoosiers prevailed in the Big Ten tournament opening round in Minneapolis.
MEET THE NITTANY LIONS
Penn State returned five notable contributors from last season’s team that finished 16-17 in Mike Rhoades’ first season in University Park.
The headlining returnee is point guard Ace Baldwin Jr., one of the top two-way guards in the country. Baldwin leads the Nittany Lions in scoring, minutes, assists and steals.
He’s averaging 15 points per game on 39.1 percent shooting from the field and a 31.6 percent mark on 3s. Baldwin ranks in the top 60 nationally in free throw rate (FTA/FGA) at 64.5 percent and is 84-for-89 from the free throw line (94.4 percent). He’s also 11th in the country in assist rate at 39.8 percent and dishes out 8.5 assists per game. Baldwin’s relentlessness on offense and tenacity on defense make him one of the elite guards not just in the Big Ten but in the country.
Joining him in the starting backcourt is 6-foot-5 sophomore guard Freddie Dilione V, a transfer from Tennessee who is enjoying a larger role with the Nittany Lions. Dilione is shooting close to 56 percent on 2s and is sixth on the team in scoring at 9.9 points per game.
Senior wing Zach Hicks has been lights out from the perimeter after shooting just 34.2 percent from deep last season. The 6-foot-8 native of Camden, New Jersey, is 38-for-85 on 3s (44.7 percent), taking 73.9 percent of his field goal attempts from the perimeter. Hicks is third on the team…