Newbill Shines Again As Penn State Beats Cornell At The Buzzer

DJ Newbill led all scorers for the fourth consecutive game to open up the season with 26 points and made a game-winning layup as time expired to help Penn State beat Cornell 72-71 in the Charleston Classic.

Cornell led 71-70 with four seconds left, but turned the ball over on an inbound pass to Geno Thorpe, who immediately found Newbill on the left wing. Newbill wasted no time driving straight to the rack and laid the ball off glass and in for the game-winner in front of a crowd that swelled to triple digits on Friday night.

Here’s video of D.J. Newbill’s game-winning layup. (Via @HashTagPSU) https://t.co/56KMJr0D15

— Onward State (@OnwardState) November 22, 2014

The Nittany Lions, who move to 3-1 on the season, held a lead for only seven seconds of the game. Luckily, that turned out to be enough against a Cornell team that only had two wins last season.

After a sluggish first half in which it only shot 31 percent from the field, Penn State went into the locker room down by nine points to the Big Red. The Nittany Lions turned it around in the second half, shooting over 60 percent in the final 20 minutes.

John Johnson added a big 17 points on nine shots in 25 minutes for Penn State, none of which were bigger than the three he hit to cut the deficit to 1 with 4.5 seconds left to play.

The 13-point comeback was the largest one since last season, when the Nittany Lions overcame a similar 13-point deficit in Bloomington to beat Indiana.

Galal Cancer and Robert Hatter led Cornell with 17 points apiece in the loss.

Penn State will play USC on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. for fifth place in the Classic.