Gutsy effort from Sessoms not enough in loss to Badgers
Jim Ferry knew what was working for Penn State in crunch time against Wisconsin on Thursday night, and that was guard Sam Sessoms.
The 6-footer was consistently getting to the basket against the Badgers defense, and if his layups weren’t falling, he was getting to the line.
So when forward John Harrar gathered Myles Dread’s block of Wisconsin’s Jonathan Davis with 21 seconds left, he passed the ball to Sessoms, and Ferry — who had no timeouts to stop the clock — wanted to do what had been working down the stretch.
This time, though, the Badgers defense was ready. Sessoms’ path was blocked. He passed the ball to guard Jamari Wheeler, who gave the ball back to Sessoms.
When Sessoms drove toward the basket, he lost control, the ball was deflected and Wisconsin’s Brad Davison gathered it in and called a timeout while falling out of bounds to seal the 75-74 Badgers win.
“We were going right back at it,” Ferry said on a postgame Zoom call. “You got to give them credit. They did a good job.
“Sessoms kicked it back to Jamari, I thought Jamari might have driven it at that point, [but] he didn’t [and] gave it back to Sam because Sam had it going. We were trying to get the same stuff that we got the past three possessions in a row.”
Sessoms finished the night with a season-high and gamehigh 18 points. He scored 13 of Penn State’s final 20 points as an 18-point deficit dwindled to one. But the Philadelphia native couldn’t get off one last shot.
Big Ten Network cameras captured a distraught Sessoms on the court. His teammates comforted him, but it was a heartbroken group of Lions who walked from the court into the depths of Lucas Oil Stadium.
“I told them I love them,” Ferry said. “Appreciate every single one of them and that we all grew. We absolutely all grew from this season.”
Sessoms entered the Big Ten tournament as Penn State’s sixth-leading scorer at 7.6 points per game. He came off the bench in every game and reached double figures 10 times during the 2020-21 season after joining Penn State in the offseason as a transfer from Binghamton, where he scored more than 1,000 points in two seasons and averaged 18.6 points per game.
The former Shipley School star established himself as one of the Philadelphia area’s most prolific scorers during his prep career, and while going from the America East to the Big Ten is quite the leap in competition, Sessoms still showed how dynamic of a scorer he can be.
And that’s why it was Sessoms who took over down the stretch, not Myreon Jones or Izaiah Brockington or Seth Lundy or Myles Dread.
“It was just a matter of who had it going late, and Sam really had it going, breaking them down, getting to the rim,” Ferry said. “I think he made like three baskets in a row to really get us back in it. “That was all, just that.”
The teary-eyed Sessoms encapsulated the emotions for the rest of his Penn State teammates after a tumultuous year that saw former coach Patrick Chambers step down in October following an internal investigation into his conduct. Sessoms also marched in demonstrations against racism and social injustice in West Philly over the summer. Plus, the 2020-21 college basketball season happened amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Penn State’s season could continue if it receives an invitation to the NIT on Sunday — Ferry lobbied for one Thursday night — but the loss to the Badgers likely turned out the lights on the Lions’ NCAA Tournament hopes.
There was an air of finality to Ferry’s postgame news conference that was palpable over Zoom, but he made sure to credit players such as Sessoms for their performance over the past months, even when there were plenty of easier alternatives available.
“It’s always hard when a season comes to an end, but especially this one and the way it did because these guys had so much fight,” Ferry said. “These guys could have laid down several times this year in tough situations, and they never did.
“And that’s what makes me proud, more so than the wins and the losses, just that these guys are going to be prepared to handle a lot of things that are going to be a lot tougher in their life because of what they went through right now.
“That’s what I kind of said to the guys — whichever direction everybody goes in the future, you’re never gonna forget this.”