Swingman Geary Claxton scored 17 points and hauled down 10 rebounds to lead the Penn State Nittany Lions to a 60-42 rout of the Northwestern Wildcats in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Thursday afternoon.

Penn State scored the game’s first nine points and led 31-21 at halftime. The Nittany Lions led by as many as 26 in the second half after guard Travis Parker scored on a jumper to put Penn State ahead 55-29.

Parker finished with 10 points, as did guard Mike Walker for the Nittany Lions.

The Wildcats were led by Mohamed Hachad who scored 16 points. Vedran Vukusic added 10 for Northwestern

Defensively, Penn State held Northwestern to 16-of-50 (32.0 percent) shooting from the field, including 7-for-26 (26.7 percent) in the second half. Northwestern was 7-of-31 (22.6 percent) from beyond the arc.

“I thought defensively our guys played a very good game tonight. We’ve worked hard the last three days in trying to find No. 11 (Vedran Vukusic), No. 20 (Craig Moore) and No. 24 (Evan Seacat). We also really worked hard at trying to keep (Mohamed) Hachad off the glass. Defensively I thought we were very, very good this afternoon,” Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis said after the game.

Penn State will now face number-one seed Ohio State, Friday afternoon. Tip-off time at Conseco Fieldhouse is at 12:00 pm ET.

“For tomorrow’s game, we have to come out ready to play. We just have to work hard as a team and just have fun. We have improved a lot since the last time we played them. It’s going to be an interesting game. We just have to keep fighting,” Claxton said about facing the Buckeyes.

In other first round games in the Big Ten Tournament, Maurice Hargrow scored 15 points and Zach Puchtel added a career-high 15 rebounds to lead the Minnesota Golden Gophers to a 59-55 win over the Michigan Wolverines, Thursday afternoon.

Dion Harris led Michigan with 16 points and Daniel Horton added 14.

Maurice Ager scored 20 points and redshirt freshman Goran Suton chipped in a career-high 12 points as the Michigan State Spartans took down the Purdue Boilermakers 70-58 at Conseco Fieldhouse.

Gary Ware led Purdue with 20 points.

Blitz Notes:

The status of Ohio State’s backup center Matt Terwilliger is up in the air for the Big Ten tournament. On Wednesday, Terwilliger had an appendectomy, the surgery to remove his appendix and was hospitalized.

Recovery time of the procedure can be as little as three days up to six weeks, depending on how the surgery is done and the size of the incision.

It will be interesting to see who head coach Thad Matta will use in the rotation without Terwilliger in the mix. He averages about 10 minutes per game. One option is to go without a post player, or to use freshman Brayden Bell, who has played in just seven games this year.

Bell, a 6-8 center from Salt Lake City, Utah, averages 1.4 points per game.

One other disturbing report comes from some guy named Bob Kravitz, a sports columnist for the Indianapolis Star.

In his column that appeared in Thursday morning’s paper, Kravitz goes on and on about how Matta is the best choice for Indiana, which can be read by clicking here.

Sorry Bob, Matta is not going to leave now. Especially with the rumors that the worst-case scenario of the sanctions being placed on Ohio State from the NCAA are that all records during the four years Boban Savovic played for OSU will be stricken from the books. That means that the 1999 Final Four banner at the VCA will have to come down. That’s it.

Tags: Buckeye Basketball //