Micah Shrewsberry reveals coaching changes he made since Rutgers game

What a turnaround for Penn State this week. The Nittany Lions suffered a truly heartbreaking home loss late Sunday night when Rutgers beat them on their home floor in an ugly 59-56 game. It gets even worse, because Penn State once led 42-23, but didn’t score a field goal for the final nine minutes of the game and had their best shooter, senior Seth Lundy, go 1-16 and 0-11 from three, including a chance to tie the game on the final shot where he was stripped by Scarlet Knight guard Cam Spencer at the horn. Plus, the game was a must-have for PSU’s NCAA Tournament chances.

With that soul-crushing loss, Penn State seemed dead in the water with two more Big Ten games to play until the conference tournament. Credit Micah Shrewsberry, though, because his team responded with their biggest win of the year by going on the road and defeating Northwestern to pick up a crucial Quad 1 win and avoid being thrown out of the NCAAT picture entirely. Simply put: the Nittany Lions came up huge in the most important contest of the season.

After the game, Shrewsberry deflected the praise to his players, who he said were up bright and early on Monday morning getting in shots after the ice cold night vs. Rutgers on Sunday.

“Just putting our guys in better position. I think trying to do that, trying to look at what I thought they might do and trying to help us in in the best way. I didn’t feel like I helped them the right way in that (Rutgers) game,” said Coach Shrewsberry, taking full blame for the Rutgers debacle while crediting his guys for responding so well.

“So, you know, I apologize to our team. And that’s a mature group that we have and they can they bounce back really quickly. They were they were back in the gym on Monday morning. Like, Seth Lundy’s back in the gym working on his game. (Jalen) Pickett is back in the gym, Cam (Wynter), (Andrew) Funk, all those guys were in there. So they picked themselves up, they dusted themselves off really quickly. And, like I said, I’m a much better coach, you know, with guys like this. And, you know, I’m just happy for them. I don’t want to let them down.”

The extra reps paid off, because Lundy returned to form with four made 3s while Cam Wynter knocked down the eventual game-winner from the corner with under a second to play in overtime. That’s the shot of the season for Penn State.

Another massive opportunity coming up this Saturday as the Nittany Lions host Maryland in their regular season finale.