By Jeff Rice, NN Senior Writer

jrice@nittanynetwork.com

March 31, 2009

NEW YORK - All season long, with the obvious exception of the Illinois game and a couple of others, Penn State showed the ability to score. Defense, however, wasn’t always a given for the Nittany Lions.

Tuesday, in the NIT semifinal, the Nittany Lions got downright defensive.

Penn State held Notre Dame to 18 first-half points and went on to win 67-59 before a Madison Square Garden crowd that might as well have been imported from the Bryce Jordan Center.

The Nittany Lions (26-11), who will meet Baylor in Thursday’s 7 p.m. championship game, held Fighting Irish forward Luke Harangody to four points in the first half and 17 – more than six below his season average – for the game.

Sophomore forward Andrew Jones, who had 16 points and 15 rebounds of his own, was the primary defender on the bullish Harangody.

“The game plan was to try to push him off the block a little bit,” Jones said. “As far away from the basket as I could.”

Jones did just that, fouling Harangody just once and holding his own despite the fact that the Nittany Lion guards rarely left dangerous 3-point snipers Ryan Ayers and Kyle McAlarney alone to help out.

“That’s the best defensive game Drew’s played in a long time,” Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said. “The other guys came over just enough to keep him off his rhythm.”

The rest of the Nittany Lions were just as good on the rest of the Fighting Irish. Guards Talor Battle, Stanley Pringle, Danny Morrissey and Chris Babb and forward David Jackson helped hold Ayers and McAlarney to a combined 12 points and two combined 3-pointers.

The Nittany Lions used an uptempo, full-court attack to build 19-point leads in both halves. Notre Dame (21-15) cut the lead to four points on a pair of Harangody free throws with 4:16 to play, but two clutch buckets down the stretch by senior forward Jamelle Cornley (15 points, eight rebounds), who played with a bandaged left shoulder and twisted left ankle, allowed Penn State to seal the game with free throws.

The Nittany Lions played from behind as well as anyone this season after falling into some impressive deficits. Tuesday, their defense, which held the Fighting Irish to 33 percent shooting for the game, put them in no threat of falling behind at any point in the game.

“They really defended us,” Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said. “To beat them, you’re going to have to be a little better offensively. A lot of it was their defense, and some of it was us missing pretty good looks from shooters who were pretty good shooters.”

Notes: Battle led the Nittany Lions with 17 points but did not convert a field goal in the second half. … Forward David Jackson could miss Thursday’s championship game with the tailbone injury he suffered during a hard fall in the final seconds of the first half. … Penn State was just 2-of-17 from 3-point range and missed nine of 24 free throws.