Losing close games at home has become a habit for formerly mighty Illinois.
And winning both at home and on the road has become a habit for formerly downtrodden Penn State.
The Nittany Lions extended their winning streak to seven games Sunday by handing the struggling Illini their third straight loss in eight days.
If Demetri McCamey’s floater on a drive to the basket with two seconds remaining had gone in, the game would have gone into overtime. Instead, the ball rolled off the rim. Jamelle Cornley grabbed his 12th rebound, was fouled and made two free throws, giving him 18 points and Penn State a 68-64 Big Ten victory at Assembly Hall.
“I was just trying to get to the basket and get a layup or a foul to tie the game,” said the freshman guard, who came off the bench to score a career-high 18 points. “I thought [Geary] Claxton was going to take a charge, so I tried to throw a floater. I should have taken one more step in.”
McCamey put Illinois (8-7, 0-2) in a position to win by scoring its last eight points on a drive and two three-pointers in the final 25 seconds.
“Big-time game for Demetri,” Illinois coach Bruce Weber said. “Definitely, he has made some strides. He still has breakdowns at different times mentally and in decision-making, and he has a tendency to walk it up.”
The secret for Penn State (10-4, 2-0) was its monumental 49-24 rebounding margin against a team considered one of the best in the Big Ten in that category. Twenty-two of the rebounds came on the offensive end, and the Nittany Lions parlayed them into 20 second-chance points. Claxton added 11 rebounds.
One reason the Illini were overwhelmed by the powerful 6-foot-5-inch forwards was because their second-best rebounder, 6-9 Brian Randle, again had serious foul problems and played only 14 minutes.
The Illini’s top rebounder with eight was 6-2 guard Chester Frazier. He also did an exemplary job of playmaking with six assists and zero turnovers, but he remained in a shooting slump and shot 2-for-7.
Illinois outshot the visitors 45.5 percent to 36.4 percent and got good production from McCamey and swingman Calvin Brock, who scored 15 points and fired up the 16,618 fans when his four-point play cut the deficit to 56-54.
But again a zone defense gave the Illini a hard time.
“We played man-to-man for the first four minutes just to get our feet moving,” said Penn State coach Ed DeChellis, who then switched to his game plan of using 1-3-1 and 2-3 zones.
“Rebounding and guarding were the focus. Illinois is a great rebounding team. That’s one of the ways they can score. We wanted to limit that. I thought if we could rebound the ball and defend them and not [allow] transition baskets, we would have a chance. That’s the way it played out.”
For Illinois, it was the same old story.
“We’ve had some pretty good times here,” Weber said. “Now we have some hard times, and we’ve got to deal with it. We’ve lost close games. If we correct some mistakes and get some consistency, maybe we can find a way to win some.”
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nmilbert@tribune.com
