Penn State basketball’s season has officially ended after the team announced it had removed itself from postseason consideration Sunday afternoon.
“Penn State Basketball has removed itself from postseason consideration and will turn its full attention and focus on building for the 2025-26 season,” the statement said.
The announcement came eight days after Penn State basketball’s regular-season finale on March 8, which was a win against No. 12 Wisconsin in Madison. Senior guard D’Marco Dunn was named the Big Ten Player of the Week after he scored a career-high 25 points.
When asked whether he would accept an NIT or College Basketball Crown invitation after the win, head coach Mike Rhoades said, “I’m not even there, man. We haven’t had a lot of wins in the last two months. So I’m going to enjoy this. We’ll figure it out from there.”
After a 12-2 start to the year, Penn State basketball won just four of its last 17 games. As PSU’s at-large bid hopes for the NCAA Tournament dwindled throughout the second half of the season, its only real chance of making it to the big dance was through the Big Ten Tournament. After a seven-game losing streak from Jan. 24 to Feb. 15, though, even the conference tournament seemed almost out of reach for the Nittany Lions. Penn State would go on to win its next two games before losing at Indiana on Feb. 26. Following the loss, Rhoades expressed his frustration over the reformatting of the conference’s postseason.
“Yeah, I think that’s horseshit, to be honest with you,” Rhoades said.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“… Everybody bangs their chest about the student-athlete experience. And then you have it and we’re in the Big Ten, and we’re keeping three teams out of it? And you see how we play today. You know, we had a tough stretch. But I don’t think you take away experiences from student athletes. I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s not professional … The leaders got to do a better job talking that through …”
Penn State was officially eliminated from the conference tournament in its next game against No. 16 Maryland — a 68-64 home loss.
With the season officially being over, PSU can now put all of its focus on next season. With four departing seniors — including two-time Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year Ace Baldwin Jr. — Rhoades and his staff will spend the next month recruiting the transfer portal and working on player retention.
Penn State basketball ended the 2024-25 season 16-15 overall record and a 6-14 conference record.
