No need for speed? A look at Penn State basketball's pace on offense

Penn State basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry interrupted his Monday press conference to engage in a brief mock draft exercise.

Where, Shrewsberry asked — rhetorically — would the first Nittany Lion come off the board, if all of the Big Ten’s talent entered a draft pool? You’d have to expect the guys who will hear their names called in the first round of the NBA Draft this summer to go first, like Purdue’s Jaden Ivey, Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis and Iowa’s Keegan Murray.

Shrewsberry rattled off several more names, too, that might go before the first Nittany Lion: Zach Edey, Kofi Cockburn, Trevion Williams, Kris Murray, Brad Davison, Andre Curbelo. Ron Harper. Geo Baker.

“We’re not at the top of the shop in terms of talent level,” Shrewsberry said. “So we need to do what we can to stay in it.”

Part of staying in it, for Shrewsberry and the Nittany Lions, means playing slow. Penn State is 342nd out of 358 Division I teams, with an estimated 63.9 possessions per game, according to KenPom. Adjust for opposition and the Nittany Lions fall to 347th. Their average offensive possession lasts 20.2 seconds. Only six teams in the country run more time off the shot clock.

That is, by and large, intentional. Sometimes it works. Penn State’s two slowest-moving games of the season produced wins over Indiana and Oregon State.

When things don’t click, though, it can make for a difficult watch.

Penn State’s offense has struggled mightily in recent games against Iowa, when it scored a season-low 51 points, and against Ohio State, when it managed just 56.

“I don’t think playing at a really crazy pace would be the best thing for us,” Shrewsberry said. “Especially not at Iowa, Indiana. You’re giving the other teams more opportunities as well. I love our team, but if we were drafting, where’s our first guy get picked?”

Penn State’s pace adjustment

For players like Myles Dread, John Harrar, Seth Lundy and Sam Sessoms, who stuck around in Happy Valley following the coaching change this offseason, the new pace is much different from how they played the last two seasons.

The new staff slammed on the brake pedal, and that takes some adjusting.

Last season, under interim head coach Jim Ferry, the Nittany Lions ranked 125th in adjusted tempo rating, well within the nation’s top half. The season before that, they sat 54th — with the second-highest tempo in the Big Ten.

Asked about the differences associated with playing this way, Dread pointed toward the decision-making process in-game.

“We run when we can. We run the offense, we run a lot of plays, we run a lot of reads,” Dread said. “I believe that the onus is more on us as opposed to calling to different plays that we’ve worked on.

“The onus is more on us to see what’s going on, find mismatches and make reads and make decisions based on those mismatches.”

Striking the right balance

Shrewsberry wants runners.

It’s a topic he planned to address in Penn State’s film sessions this week, he said. The Nittany Lions had opportunities to chase an easy bucket or two in Saturday’s loss to Iowa, but they didn’t always do so.

“I think we can always get better,” he said. “We’re not attacking enough in transition when we have the opportunities. We’re getting stops — we’re getting a lot of stops. But we’re not running. We need sprinters.”

Even in the win over Indiana, in which Penn State registered an estimated 58.2 possessions — its second-lowest total of the year — the Nittany Lions were opportunistic in transition, Shrewsberry said.

“We got some transition, corner threes because we were sprinting in transition, we were getting the ball down the floor a little bit,” he said. “We haven’t done that in the last few games, that’s an area where I think we need to improve.”

Ultimately, though, pace becomes less of a concern if the Nittany Lions’ offense is operating well.

Shrewsberry isn’t happy with how the Nittany Lions attacked in their last two games.

He worries, though, about devoting too much attention away from Penn State’s defensive efforts. The Nittany Lions rank 56th in the country in defensive efficiency, a metric that has to stick if they want to stay in games.

“It’s like an old cartoon, you put your finger in there and water starts shooting out the other way, right? That’s your biggest fear. That’s my biggest fear as a coach,” Shrewsberry said. “We talk about offense here today and tomorrow, we need to be better going into IU. They scored [58] points when they were here the last time, do we focus so much on offense they get 75?

“Then it’s all for naught, we’ve gotta go back to doing the other stuff. You have to be able to do everything. Our pace doesn’t become much of a factor if we’re scoring, if we’re getting better shots, which we need to do more of. If we’re not turning the basketball over, we’re getting more opportunities and we’re probably scoring more points.”

Indeed, Shrewsberry made it clear that his focus lies on ensuring the Nittany Lions operate their version offense effectively — but he won’t change its fabric.

Speeding things up could give the Nittany Lions some easier buckets, but it could also open the door for the list of potential draftees Shrewsberry listed during his thought exercise.

Jaden Ivey. Johnny Davis. Keegan Murray. The list goes on.

For now, the Nittany Lions will avoid meeting those names in battle out in the open court, where their athleticism can decide games on its own.