Some good and bad from Penn State's OT loss to LSU

ALTOONA, Pa. -- There's not a whole lot expected from the Penn State basketball team this season, at least on the outside.

Inside the program, however, first-year coach Micah Shrewsberry and his players believe they have the pieces in place to do some good things.

The Nittany Lions nearly pulled off a terrific early season win late Friday night, only to fall in overtime to LSU, 68-63, in the semifinals of the Emerald Coast Classic in Niceville, Fla.

Seth Lundy tied the game at 58 with 0.6 seconds left in regulation on a putback after a wild sequence to end regulation. Here's a look at the crazy sequence, as the inbound pass nearly gets away, then Myles Dread throws up a prayer that was answered by Lundy's putback.

Penn State's offense went flat in OT, as LSU jumped ahead, 64-58. But the Lions got the ball down three, 66-63, with 31 seconds to go. Their offense sputtered in that key sequence, however, and LSU held on for the win.

Here are my four takeaways from the game:

1. Shrewsberry: "There's no moral victories out here"

The coach mentioned that right off the bat in his postgame comments, sending a message that a close loss isn't good enough.

"We need to play that way every single time to give us a chance," he added.

Later on, Shrewsberry was asked further about how to balance the moral victory component with realistic expectations, given that not many people would have given Penn State a chance to beat a quality LSU team that is expected to contend for an NCAA Tournament berth.

"You said maybe not a lot of people, those maybe not a lot of people weren't the people in our locker room. I know that much," Shrewsberry said. "We always believe that we can. We come with a game plan that we're going to win. We come with a defensive mindset that we're going to win. And we're not satisfied with this.

"I don't care about outside expectations. I don't care about anybody telling me where we're gonna finish in the Big Ten. We control our own destiny. And if we defend like this, we have this toughness, this mindset, this idea -- we'll get better offensively -- but we defend like this, we'll give ourselves a chance."

That's an awesome answer from Shrewsberry. He's trying to instill a winning attitude in this program, not an attitude that close losses are good enough.

The bottom line is, this could be a long season for Penn State, because the Big Ten is so freaking difficult. But if the Lions show up every night and play like they did Friday, they will have a chance to beat some teams that most people don't think they'll be able to beat.

2. The good news

Lundy had the fantastic putback to tie the game.

Sam Sessoms was outstanding late, hitting some big shots on drives and a 3. As I tweeted during the game, he's one of the better finishers at the rim I've seen in college basketball in recent years.

Jalen Pickett, the transfer from Siena, led the Lions with 14 points.

Penn State has a lot of reasons to feel good about itself after the game, since it nearly won.

3. The bad news

Lundy was flat out awful most of the night. He disappeared, in all honesty, and did almost nothing offensively for most of the game. He finished 3-of-16 from the field. Penn State just cannot have that level of inconsistency from its leading score.

Then there was this from Lundy:

Sessoms waited way too long to get heavily involved offensively. He had no points midway through the second half.

Pickett took only one shot in the final 13:40. He had 14 points up until that point, then disappeared as Sessoms started to take over down the stretch.

Penn State's end-of-game situations were not good. Down by two at the end of regulation, Shrewsberry didn't like what he saw and had to call timeout with 4.6 seconds left. The shot the Lions got was not a good one, but they were bailed out by Lundy's wild putback.

At the end of overtime, down by 3, Penn State's offense was going nowhere again, and Shrewsberry had to call timeout with 9 seconds left. Nothing came out of that sequence.

If Penn State is going to win games in the Big Ten, it's probably going to come down to end-game situations. Yes, they had the prayer answered on Lundy's putback, but nothing about that sequence was very pretty. And the sequence in overtime was just poor.

4. This kind of game does help prepare for Big Ten play

The Lions have early Big Ten games against Ohio State and Michigan State coming up in early December, and this was the kind of showing Shrewsberry expects from his team in league play.

"We turned this into a Big Ten game," Shrewsberry said. "That's what we do with our defense. If we defend like this, you give yourself a chance every single night. And this is gonna be the Big Ten. These are gonna be the wars like this in the Big ten. So this is great preparation for us, right? ... This was great practice these early Big Ten games that are coming up."

Penn State will play again Saturday night in Florida, against the loser of Friday's late game between Oregon State and Wake Forest.