During Penn State men’s basketball’s tip-off against Bucknell Saturday, Qudus Wahab won the opening tip and looked around for his point guard. Ace Baldwin Jr. was nowhere to be found, though, because he was starting on the bench for the second time this season.

Baldwin was tagged as the “head of our snake” by Mike Rhoades before the season started. He was the biggest name to come to Happy Valley in the offseason and many expected he would be the guy to take over the leadership role left by Jalen Pickett a season ago.

Through eight games so far, Baldwin is having the best season of his career statistically. He is averaging 14.4 points per game compared to 12.7 a year ago when he was named the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year at VCU.

However, the stat that tells the biggest story is that Baldwin is only averaging 3.3 assists a game. The point guard finished the past two seasons with 5.8 and 5.5 assists a game. Some of the drop in numbers could be from sharing the floor with fellow point guard Kanye Clary, but something else is different with this Baldwin.

Rhoades can see it, and many people from the outside looking in can see it, too.

“I need a better Ace,” Rhoades said. “I love that kid with every fiber in my body, but at all levels, I need a better Ace. We all do.”

Rhoades didn’t mean he needs a better Baldwin statistically, but he needs a better leader on the floor and in the locker room. Baldwin has been scratched from the starting lineup twice already this season, something that would’ve been unheard of during his time at VCU.

It takes time to adjust to a new school and new conference, and Baldwin could be having some of those growing pains right now. But he doesn’t have much time to get back to his old self with Big Ten foes Maryland and Ohio State on the horizon. The Nittany Lions will need their leader more than ever over the next week to get their season back on track.

“The one thing I love about [Baldwin], like a bunch of guys on the team, they want to win and they want to compete,” Rhoades said. “They just have to go about it the right way.”

If Baldwin can figure out the “right way,” then Penn State hoops will be just fine this season. If not, it could go downhill pretty quickly.

As Rhoades said following the loss to Bucknell on Saturday and again to the media on Monday, failure is a part of the game of basketball. He didn’t like how his team responded to the losses during the Nittany Lions’ four-game skid, but he recognizes that adversity is necessary to become a better basketball team. Right now, it seems like Baldwin is facing as much adversity as anyone inside the blue and white locker room.

“Building a program, sometimes you have to go through failure to get to success, and you hope to avoid it as much as possible, but you have to go through it,” Rhoades said.

Rhoades isn’t taking over the Penn State men’s basketball program by himself. Baldwin is a part of that process as much as anyone else is. It’s fair to say through eight games he hasn’t done his role in that department. But if anyone believes in Baldwin the most — it’s Mike Rhoades.