He is a stock character in any coming-of-age movie. He may lack looks or money, muscles or manners or savoir faire, but no matter the failing, it is the reason he is locked out of the inner circle he longs to join.
He is mocked by the wits, beaten up by the bullies, shunned by clubs that simply won’t have him and is on the outside looking in, his nose pressed plaintively against a cold pane of glass. But then imperceptibly, then more noticeably, he slowly begins to blossom and suddenly is noticed by those who once spurned him.
That is one way to view Purdue and Penn State, who this season are the Big Ten’s teams-on-the-make. The Boilermakers have won just six conference games the last two seasons. The Nittany Lions have won just 10 in the last three.
But with their talents finally coming of age, both are threats to join those jostling for position behind league powers Wisconsin and Ohio State.
“For the past few seasons, we’ve been the bottom of the barrel in the Big Ten,” Boilermakers guard David Teague said Saturday. “But both are rebuilding programs. Both had coaching changes and player changes and both programs are definitely on the rise now.”
That is what drew us to Mackey Arena this day, to view a pair of teams on the rise, and both proved themselves capable enough to finish in the top five in the Big Ten’s scrambled race.
On Saturday, it was Purdue (12-4, 1-1) that made the biggest early move, escaping with a 64-60 victory over Penn State. The Boilermakers survived behind 24 points from Carl Landry, 20 from Teague and some nettlesome interior defense.
But the Nittany Lions (10-5, 1-1) didn’t go down easily, coming back from a 15-point deficit late in the first half and reaching the final minute with a chance to win.
“I think we’re really improved,” Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said.
More Top Picks Best Pool Filters
Seven of his players have missed games or practice time to injuries and he has had a healthy rotation only in the last week.
“We’re starting to get a rhythm now,” DeChellis said. “It has been very frustrating, but I think we’re OK. We have to clean some things up. But it’s tough to win on the road in this league. We had an opportunity, but we didn’t cash in.”
One reason they didn’t was the shooting of Teague, who was 7 of 12 overall and 5 of 9 on three-pointers. Another was Purdue’s 16-2 advantage at the free-throw line. But the Boilermakers primarily succeeded as they used to in their glory days, with an active defense that blunted Penn State’s best weapons.
Teague, his team’s top stopper, glued himself to Nittany Lions star Geary Claxton and held him to eight points on 4-of-12 shooting. Gordon Watt, the Evanston grad who transferred from Boston College, did the same to forward Jamelle Cornley and held him to seven points on 3-of-9 shooting.
Stripped of their primary weapons, who work down low, the Nittany Lions resorted to the three-point shot, finishing 10 of 20 from beyond the arc. But that shot can be fool’s gold. In the last minute, when they were down by just three points, they missed a pair of threes, were forced to foul and watched Teague and Landry make free throws that iced it for Purdue.
Last season, which ended for the Boilermakers with three fewer victories than they have now, those seniors were injured and on the bench. Now healthy, their finishing touches symbolized their team’s resurrection.
“We really couldn’t help those guys at all [last season]. That’s what hurt the most,” Teague said.
“We really dedicated ourselves in the off-season to get this program back on the map, to get guys back to the winning way that [former coach Gene Keady] basically built with his own two hands. We just want to get this program back to where coach Keady once had it. . . .
“It seems like a decade, it seems so long since Purdue has been winning. That’s the thing we want to do. We want to be responsible for getting Purdue [back] on the map.”
———-