At full strength, Penn State is not great. Today, they were missing their leading scorer (14 points/game) plus half the team and some staff members are still fighting the flu.
Pikiell is good. I think that's agreed upon. Still, there's an adjustment to coaching in a higher level conference. Hopefully that gets worked out and is no longer an issue when they have the weapons to compete.
The only way they'll hang in games this season is to play slow, grind it out, limit possessions, and hope things go their way every once in a while.