Falling apart: How Penn State, Micah Shrewsberry unwound

The easiest answers are always the simplest. And in Micah Shrewsberry’s decision to leave Penn State for Notre Dame, there is no shortage of those available storylines.

• Shrewsberry left because he wanted to go home. He and his wife and his family are from Indiana and have spent the majority of their lives there. Heading back to South Bend, a place he coached previously, puts him in the region with which he’s most familiar and comfortable.

• Shrewsberry left because Penn State’s infrastructure and support for NIL, for all but the final weeks of his tenure, were non-existent. NIL is a critical component to success in modern major college basketball, and the Nittany Lions were severely lacking. 

• Shrewsberry left because, well into the negotiating stages of a contract extension with Penn State, the needs and demands for urgency were not met with an aligning enthusiasm from the administration or its donor class. These dismissals and relative inaction, in response to a process that was in progress early during the season, created a tension and rift that even a late avalanche of rallied financial support couldn’t overcome.

• Shrewsberry left because, following a special season, Penn State is facing a front-and-center rebuild. The best players from the 2022-23 season won’t be back next season, creating a frantic need for ready-to-play contributors this off-season. Crucially, without ready-to-go NIL funds to distribute, Shrewsberry’s ability to restock the cupboard was kneecapped. 

On their own, they stand as tidy, individual storylines to explain why Shrewsberry won’t be prowling Penn State’s sideline next season. A sort of choose-your-own-adventure, the path believed most thoroughly opens the door to easy heroes and villains, scapegoats, and turncoats. 

Watching the entirety of the process unfold first-hand, the truth is a messy blend of all. The narrative of a relationship undone, it’s worth revisiting the moments and events that culminated at this juncture for the Penn State men’s basketball program.

A warning sign

The best place to start is last August. Penn State was well into its summer workouts, delighted by the additions of Camren Wynter and Andrew Funk in the transfer portal, and was already convinced of the potential assembled for the season ahead. 

Concurrently, Penn State’s coaching staff was on the recruiting trail working to lock down the follow-up to the exciting five-man Class of 2022. Basketball was the primary factor for Kebba Njie, Kanye Clary, Evan Mahaffey, Jameel Brown, and Demetrius Lilley, a group that committed to playing for Shrewsberry in the infancy of the newly permitted name, image, and likeness rules.

Recruiting the Class of 2023 was a different landscape, though. Having already landed the commitments of Braeden Shrewsberry in November 2021, and his childhood friend, Logan Imes, in March 2022, Penn State set its sights on landing another monster four- or five-man class. Top uncommitted targets included Carey Booth, the son of former Penn State legend Calvin Booth, sharpshooter Reid Ducharme, four-star forward Amani Hansberry, four-star guard DeShawn Harris-Smith, and Devin Royal, another high four-star forward. 

Landing three of five would have been a dream. Two would have been a reasonable expectation given the relationships and recruiting chops of this Penn State staff. All finished the cycle ranked between Nos. 40-75 nationally; the potential for a firm footing, building the program through his preferred method of traditional recruiting and development, was on the table.

Didn’t happen.

On August 3, Royal made the call for his hometown Ohio State, which was an understandable but tough pill to swallow. Three weeks later, Booth hopped aboard for Penn State, committing on August 24. But what Penn State had hoped would be the first of at least two commitments was ultimately the last. 

Harris-Smith landed with Maryland the same day. Ducharme picked Xavier the day after. And, critically, Hansberry opted to play for the Illini, 603 miles from his Silver Spring, Md., home on August 28.

Clearing the air

The recruiting misses stung. But, the totality of the class painted a visual of undeniable contrasts for the new NIL landscape.

Among the commitments, Penn State landed the son of the head coach, one of the best friends of that son, and the son of an NBA president. NIL, predictably, had not been a factor in the recruitments of any. 

Among the misses, it was. Most notably, Penn State felt strongly that a more competitive NIL infrastructure was the deciding factor swaying Hansberry to Illinois. The perceived leader in its NIL war chest in the Big Ten for men’s basketball, Illinois was positioned miles ahead of the Nittany Lions.

Feedback from the recruiting trail, then, evolved into something resembling an existential crisis for Shrewsberry and his staff. A message that had been communicated to Penn State’s athletic administrators, in the earliest stages of their tenures in the department, took on a more pressing urgency.

Internally, the reception to that urgency was perceived as lukewarm. With a new athletic director in Pat Kraft at the helm, a new staff arriving with him late last summer, only one disorganized, inefficient collective available for raising basketball funds in Success with Honor, and a relatively small donor class either unable or unwilling to embrace the new normal, the issue festered with little movement for months.

Sounding the alarms

Meanwhile, Penn State’s season arrived soon thereafter. The Nittany Lions produced a 9-2 nonconference record and split its December Big Ten games against Michigan State and Illinois. 

Four days after the road upset over the Illini, Shrewsberry joined me as a guest on the Penn State Hoops Show podcast. Interviewing from his office at the Bryce Jordan Center, the win over the Illini, the budding formula for winning, and star guard Jalen Pickett were all discussed. But, toward the end of the conversation, I asked him about NIL and its wide-ranging, growing influence.

Shrewsberry’s answer, in the context of who and what he’d been through his first 20 months at Penn State, was telling. And, in the wake of his exit from the program, demands a full recounting and an accompanying explainer. 

“NIL is a topic that, it’s almost controversial for a lot of people. Right now, you have to adjust to what’s happening in the times,” he began. “It’s something that, it’s really big. It’s really big in recruiting and it’s really big in player retention.”

Controversial? To whom? 

To Penn State donors, who’d been conditioned for decades to believe money in college athletics was not just an illegal practice by competitors, but also flatly ignoble and to the detriment of its purity. 

Explaining that the first two classes, including the three-man group that’d signed just weeks earlier, were built on relationships, the details were fleshed out. His son, his buddy, and Booth were all coming to Penn State thanks to relationships. 

Others, he hinted, were not.

“We got guys. But, we also lost guys,” Shrewsberry said. “I don’t think we’ll ever be… we’re not gonna be like Illinois. Illinois is one of the best in the league right now with what they’re doing with NIL. But we have to do something. 

“That’s something where we can’t fall behind. You’re going to lose out on kids. When everything is even, there has to be something that puts it over the top. The relationship, it’s not going to be that, unfortunately. And they’re good kids. We’re not recruiting kids that are asking us for NIL money. But, they might ask what you guys are doing, or what’s going on, or what’s happening with your team, and when we don’t have anything, that’s, nothing.”

Speaking in his consistent, folksy tone, Shrewsberry might not have sounded excited or upset. But, he was locked and loaded and fired the indictment on Penn State’s predicament with his next statement. 

“I can’t speak for everybody, but I would say of 14 teams in the Big Ten, we’re probably 14. Maybe 13. So, it’s just about who we want to be as a program,” he said. “What are we willing to say is going to be our standard? Because, I can be as good of a coach in the world, but if you don’t have as good of players, it doesn’t matter. Or, if you do a great job with your development, you find a kid, you develop him, and then somebody comes in and they have something for him, that’s kids, that’s life right now, and that’s what’s happening.”

Doing a deal

A few other important things were happening concurrently with that broader NIL picture. In January, Shrewsberry’s representation and Penn State began work on a contract extension. In the middle of the second year of his initial deal with the program, the opening terms were being discussed to keep Shrewsberry at Penn State for a longer term at an increased salary. 

Meanwhile, on Jan. 19, Notre Dame effectively fired head coach Mike Brey, who announced the move as his retirement. Within hours of the announcement, The Athletic’s Brian Hamilton offered a snapshot of the program as a whole and a list of the candidates who Notre Dame would likely pursue in what he described as “a sometimes thankless job.”

But, he wrote, with “Notre Dame’s ACC membership, arena upgrades, and investment in a new practice facility,” there were upsides to make the job appealing. Whether they offset complications he detailed as “academic expectations, idiosyncrasies in campus life, and the attention- and resource-gobbling monolith that is football” couldn’t and wouldn’t be known until the hiring process played out. 

Shrewsberry’s name was amongst eight others, viewed as a “home run fit” specifically to the type of program Notre Dame wants and has to be.

‘Atmosphere is everything’

Within a week of Brey’s announced departure and the stories that ensued, Penn State traveled to Rutgers. An important matchup in the middle of the Big Ten slate, the Nittany Lions suffered their most lopsided loss of the season, a 65-45 decision at the RAC. 

It was only a misstep in a rollercoaster season for the program, but Shrewsberry’s preview of the trip again offered clear insights into his evolving perception of Penn State. Hailing the atmosphere created by Rutgers’ fans, in an otherwise lackluster venue, Shrewsberry said as much about what was missing at Penn State home games as what the Scarlet Knights could boast.

“Atmosphere is everything for a program. I talked about how their players feed off of their fans, just because of how loud it is in there,” Shrewsberry said. “Recruits see that. They watch games, they’re at games, and now you see Rutgers has won because of their fans. And now they’re going to NCAA Tournaments. They’re getting better and better and everything’s growing. 

“But, there’s no kid that’s looking at Rutgers and being like, ‘Man, the shape of the building is terrible. Or, the bathroom situation is not the best.’ Nobody cares about that. All they care about is the atmosphere when they’re playing, what they’re seeing, and everything else.”

And Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center? 

Stressing that the venue is considerably less important than the fans and energy within it, Shrewsberry implicitly begged for more seats filled and, maybe more important, a sense of energy and enthusiasm impacting the games because of it. 

“Bryce Jordan Center is what we got. I can’t snap my fingers and it’s gonna change. There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “But, if the Bryce Jordan Center was rocking, and as loud as can be, what’s the difference between that place and Rec Hall?

“We got to do our part as well. But, let’s come up with something. Let’s be organized in what we’re doing. And let’s make Michigan come in here and be like, ‘What in the hell is going on in here? We did not expect this.’ That’s what I want people to say.”

Later that week, he got it. Hosting Michigan on Jan. 29, a 22-point win for the Nittany Lions, the BJC drew its second-biggest crowd of the season at 12,047 fans. 

Getting hot

The sequence was a precursor to a four-game slide that seemed to flatline Penn State’s chance at an NCAA Tournament appearance in February. The Nittany Lions lost to at Purdue, at Nebraska, in overtime against Wisconsin, and again on the road at Maryland. 

Internally, both within the basketball staff and Penn State’s athletic administration, the possibility of losing Shrewsberry to another program diminished. And with it, the attempt to lock up the extension talks similarly diminished.

Then, Penn State won.

The Nittany Lions won five times in their final six games to close the season with a 10-10 mark in the Big Ten and a 19-12 record overall. They entered the Big Ten Tournament as a 10-seed, ripping off three wins to reach the final against 1-seed Purdue.

Attention continued to build around Shrewsberry as a hot coaching candidate not just for Notre Dame’s vacancy, but nationally as well. All the while, Penn State remained confident that a deal would be reached to retain him, with Kraft even having scheduled a board of trustees compensation committee meeting for the day before the start of the conference tournament.

Emboldened by a late push for NIL contributions, a confluence of donations from Penn State message board communities, and big checks from individuals and businesses coming in, it led to a March 13 virtual all-hands meeting. The program convened a Zoom conference with athletic administrators, NIL leaders, donors, Shrewsberry, and some of his staff. On the call, with buzz for Shrewsberry unmistakable on the national coaching carousel, the program again laid out its concerns for NIL to donors, to a mixed, but mostly positive, reaction.

Falling apart

Among Shrewsberry and his staff, however, the rush to elicit big donations to NIL, at the risk of losing Shrewsberry to another program, exacerbated lingering doubts. In the aftermath of a historically successful season by Penn State’s standards, what had been invisible previously suddenly surged to the forefront of consciousness for all affected parties.

Why hadn’t that push been made sooner? Why hadn’t the needs, communicated as urgent far earlier, been prioritized?

The message that had been addressed by Shrewsberry personally, and publicly, in December crystallized. 

“It’s about what you want as a program and what you’re happy with. If we have a little bit more that we’re offering to our guys, or that we’re doing for our team in NIL, that top 30 class is probably top 15 in the country. Just one or two more guys,” Shrewsberry said. “It’s a controversial topic, but it’s what college basketball is right now. It’s what’s going on; it’s here. So you can not like it, and that’s your prerogative. Then you can’t come back and complain about the product. I’m never going to complain. We need as much help as we can get. But also, it’s your choice.”

Ultimately, Shrewsberry didn’t complain. Instead, he was presented with an opportunity to start new, with familiar relationships at a familiar university in a familiar state, and opted for it. 

At Penn State, the strides needed for the program, to make the improvements Shrewsberry had sought to realistically build the program, had not been met until the end. And, though a flurry of activity to rectify those months of stagnation has since been made, it will now need to be directed toward a new leader for the Nittany Lion program.