Game-winners cement Camren Wynter as Big Ten Player of the Week

Jalen Pickett has company. Along with the Penn State All-American candidate point guard, Camren Wynter nabbed this week’s Big Ten Player of the Week honors, joining Pickett’s two accolades earned earlier this season.

It’s his first career honor, and comes on the heels of two season-defining plays for the Nittany Lions. First hammering home a buzzer-beating 3-pointer in overtime at Northwestern, the Drexel grad transfer scooped up and scored Seth Lundy’s 3-point miss with the clock set to expire against Maryland on Sunday. 

Both crucial wins for Penn State’s postseason hopes, the plays helped notch a 68-65 victory over the Wildcats and a 65-64 win over the Terrapins on Senior Day at the Bryce Jordan Center. 

While the recognition had not yet been bestowed upon Wynter, Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry was sure to let Wynter, his family, and the rest of the buzzing crowd at the BJC understand just how important his contributions have been of late.

“The ups and downs that he’s had this year, man, these last few games, this dude has been as big and as special as anybody that’s walked through here,” Shrewsberry told Wynter on Sunday afternoon. “You are representing yourself, your family, anybody that’s ever been with you. You are playing special basketball, and we don’t get to this point in the season without what you’re doing right here. These two game-winners are going to live in infamy.”

Camren Wynter

Wynter’s huge buckets capped a regular season in which he averaged 8.7 points, 2.0 assists, and 2.7 rebounds per game over 27.5 minutes played. 

Wynter’s performances of late have been the highlight of an admittedly up and down season, though. Complementing Pickett as Penn State’s off-ball guard, Wynter struggled to find his footing offensively at times in his one-and-only season with the Nittany Lions. 

Aside from scoring 18 against Loyola Maryland and 26 in the Nittany Lions’ double-overtime loss at Clemson, Wynter was largely kept in check as a scorer into the bulk of the Big Ten schedule. Still, with a 15-point effort in an overtime loss to Wisconsin, a game in which he regained his starter status after a three-game stretch coming off the bench, Wynter set the stage for a crucial closing stretch to the season. With 14 points at Minnesota, 18 at Ohio State, 16 in the loss to Rutgers, and 24 at Northwestern, Wynter helped lead the Nittany Lions to five wins in their final six games. 

Over that five-game stretch, he has hit 61.7 percent of his shots, made 13-of-18 3-pointers, and has scored 15.2 points per game.

Late-season pivot for Camren Wynter

According to Shrewsberry, it took an important conversation and unlocking from Penn State’s staff to relent on their offensive strategy in order to free Wynter. 

“We talk a lot about our shot profile as a team. We want to get to the rim, we want to get layups, we want to shoot open threes. But we don’t want to shoot a boatload of mid range, tough pull up twos,” Shrewsberry said on Sunday. “But, he’s thrived on that throughout his whole career. So I really tried to talk to him about, be yourself and I’ll coach the other guys.

“The fear is, Cam starts shooting some pull ups and somebody else thinks is okay, so now they take two. And somebody else thinks it’s okay and they take two. Then somebody else takes another one. And now that’s all we’re getting. I was like, you be yourself. Just be yourself, and I’ll continue to coach everybody else.”

What’s transpired in the time since is a version of Wynter reminiscent of the dynamic scorer who arrived to Penn State after a career spent at Drexel. Getting to the basket and hitting shots all over the floor, Wynter has helped transform Penn State’s offense en route to its 10-seed in this week’s Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, with an opportunity still in play to reach the NCAA Tournament.

“I think he’s playing with no pressure, he’s just playing free. He’s just been loose, he’s been in attack mode, and he’s scored when he needed to,” Shrewsberry said. “Even when he was struggling, he’s continued to work on his game. So now, he’s very confident in his shot, shooting open threes. He’s been as big of a factor of us playing this well late in the year as anybody.”