The best Williams Arena crowds this season for Gophers men’s basketball games have been on Saturday afternoons, when there was buzz surrounding the team and expectations were raised.

That was the case when the Gophers hosted Penn State after Ben Johnson’s team completed a sweep of Big Ten teams in Los Angeles to get in contention for a first-round bye in the Big Ten tournament next month.

Being favored isn’t a position the Gophers have been in often. They handled it poorly again Saturday, when they lost 69-60 to the last-place Nittany Lions in front of a season-high announced crowd of 11,292 at the Barn.

“That’s just kind of the immaturity today that showed,” Johnson said. “Our engagement was nowhere near where it needs to be to win a Big Ten game, especially when you’re coming down the final stretch.”

In a game eerily similar to a bad home loss against then-last place Washington on Feb. 1, the Gophers (14-13, 6-10 Big Ten) looked panicked and feeling the pressure. They missed 13 straight shots and went without a field goal for the final nine minutes of the first half.

“It wasn’t about X’s and O’s to a certain extent,” Johnson said. “It wasn’t about coverages. It was about mentally were we ready to be engaged, to compete, to play with force. All the stuff we had been doing. We knew they were going to play like that. This time of the year you have to play like that.”

The Gophers led 24-15 in the first half after Lu’Cye Patterson’s three-pointer at the 9:01 mark, but they trailed 28-26 by halftime and didn’t score another field goal until the second half.

Point-blank layups. Wide-open three-pointers. Midrange jumpers. Putbacks. Nothing dropped.