University Park, Pa. — Penn State all-time leading scorer Talor Battle (Albany, N.Y.) has been named an honorable-mention All-American by the Associated Press becoming the first Nittany Lion honored by the AP since Pete Lisicky in 1997 and collecting just the sixth AP honor in program history.
Battle joins Jess Arnelle (1954 & 1955), whom he passed to become the Lions’ all-time leading scorer this season, Bob Weiss (1965), Carver Clinton (1966) and Lisicky (1997) as the only Lions ever to be honored on the post-season All-America teams compiled by the Associated Press. All earned honorable-mention honors. Arnelle was also a first-team selection by the Helm’s Foundation in 1954 and 1995.
Battle, who finished second in the Big Ten in scoring (20.2 ppg) and threes per game (3.0), also became the first Penn State player ever to earn multiple Big Ten first-team all-conference selections and multiple NABC and USBWA All-region selections this season.
Battle posted the highest scoring average at Penn State in nearly 50 years as he led the Lions to the Big Ten Tournament Championship game vs. No. 1 Ohio State and Penn State’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade. Along the way, he became just the third Nittany Lion to earn Big Ten Tournament All-Tournament Team selection after posting games of 25 points in a semi-final win over Michigan State and 24 in the final loss to Ohio State. Battle closed out the year with a team-high 23 points in Penn State’s last second loss, 66-64, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, giving him 18 20-point plus games on the year and 48 for his career.
Just the third player in NCAA Division I history to post at least 2,00 points, 600 rebounds and 500 assists, Battle finished his career 10th all-time in Big Ten career scoring with 2,213 points and eclipsed the 56-year-old Penn State all-time scoring mark of 2,138 set by Arnelle in 1955. Battle became the first Lion ever to post three seasons of 500 points or more and his 687 points on the year rank as the second-best season scoring total in Penn State history.
Battle finished second all-time at Penn State with 106 threes on the year and his career three-point total of 317 ranks second all-time at Penn State and sixth in Big Ten history. He also finished his career third in assists (517), seventh in steals (145) and 14th in rebounding (625) in Penn State history as well as the Big Ten all-time leader in minutes played 4,799 and Penn State career leader in starts with 131.
