BLOOMINGTON – A frustrating team met what might well be cast to history as the beginning of its frustrating end Saturday, as Indiana lost 85-71 at home to Penn State that was every bit as disastrous as it sounds.

Here are three reasons why:

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Malik Reneau toughed his way through an ankle injury sustained in Tuesday’s win against Iowa. Xavier Johnson (elbow) couldn’t get healthy in time to do the same, however, and Indiana was worse for it.

With Johnson consigned to watching from the bench, Penn State forced seven first-half Indiana turnovers, and hit six 3s.

The former statistic isn’t surprising. The Nittany Lions field one of the Big Ten’s best on-ball defenders, Ace Baldwin, and Mike Rhoades’ high-pressure style has his team among the nation’s top 20 in opponent turnover rate.

But there was a familiar frustration in the 3-point shooting, not one of Penn State’s strengths this season. The Nittany Lions — routinely overmatched in the post — opted for a strategy not dissimilar to what IU (13-9, 5-6) saw in several nonconference games: a smaller team running chuck-and-chase offense, counting on a few low-percentage shots to go in, and on long-carom offensive rebounds when they didn’t.

Penn State hit six 3s in the first half, a big part of the reason the visitors trailed by just four at halftime, 41-37.

Disastrous second-half start

The Nittany Lions (11-11, 5-6) cranked up that pressure after the break. Indiana withered in the face of it.

The Hoosiers turned the ball over on three of their first four possessions out of the locker room, setting the tone for a half that turned steadily uglier as it wore on. At one point, Penn State had outscored IU 22-7 in the half. The visitors kept hitting 3s, while their hosts started playing with more speed and less poise, the outcome of that development expected.

Nothing Mike Woodson tried worked. His team could not settle down, and it could not get its arms around a Penn State team that had been given too much calm and confidence by the Hoosiers’ softness. Things went from bad to worse, and more or less stayed there, for the balance of the half.

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A quiet end

There was no recovery Saturday. No last-ditch sprint for the line to give Indiana the barest of chances to make something out of a frustrating season this month.

Just a defense done in by Penn State’s smaller, quicker lineups, an offense bogged down in court-spacing issues and a team that could not effectively adjust. In the end, the loss that likely consigned Indiana’s season to a disappointingly subpar finish passed as something of a non-event.

Woodson will not stop fighting for this season. That’s his job. But when the time comes, he must take some valuable lessons forward from it.

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The Hoosiers are too reliant on their two-big lineups. They don’t get enough impact — in scoring, game management and on defense — from their guard rotation. Their bench is shallow. They’re too soft on the glass for how big they play. And it is long past time this program learned to shoot 3s with both accuracy and volume again.

His first two seasons did not anoint Woodson his alma mater’s savior. A difficult third year does not automatically make his tenure a failure. There must always been room for the occasional down season.

So long as they are learned from. That will be the legacy of this season, for better or for worse. If Indiana takes the right lessons from this, then there will have been an extent to which it benefitted the Hoosiers long term.

But that is the minimum requirement now. This season’s greatest failure would be to allow it to happen again. That can’t be allowed.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball NCAA at-large hopes over after Penn State debacle