How Jalen Pickett helped unlock a new style of offense for Penn State basketball

What Penn State guard Jalen Pickett lacks in natural athleticism, he makes up for with guile. 

Pickett won’t be bringing down the house with high-rising dunks or blowing past defenders with elite quickness any time soon.

Instead, he thinks. 

“For somebody like me, I’m not a super athlete, so I think the game a lot, try to find ways to be effective on the floor,” Pickett said. “That’s something I do a lot, film study, trying to be as strong as possible, just to be able to find weaknesses that the defense has. Everybody has a weakness.”

Pickett, a fourth-year transfer from Siena, has been Penn State’s engine through the first half of the year. A pick-and-roll maestro, he’s the force that makes the Nittany Lions’ new-look offense go. His remit, he explained, is to try to find out what the opposition doesn’t do well, and exploit it. 

Through 15 contests, Pickett averaged 13.3 points per game, 4.4 assists and 4 rebounds, doing a little bit of everything for a Penn State team that has exceeded the expectations of many by winning three of its first seven Big Ten games in Micah Shrewsberry’s first season at the helm. 

The change brought by Shrewsberry — especially on the offensive end — has been significant. And Pickett holds the keys to the transition. 

A team that depended on points in transition last season, Penn State is now one of the slowest units in all of college basketball. The Nittany Lions averaged 20.1 seconds per offensive possession as of January 18, leaving only six programs out of 358 at the Division I level using more of the shot clock. 

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Penn State would like to speed up the pace just a bit, Shrewsberry and a few players have admitted. But it’s clear that their attack will remain deliberate — not frantic. It will depend heavily on ball screen action, too. 

Without a player of Pickett’s intellect and experience to conduct that orchestra, Shrewsberry’s scheme might not work. That’s evident in the guard’s usage. Pickett rarely sits, playing 36.5 minutes, on average, out of 40. 

“I don’t call a lot of plays,” Shrewsberry said. “We do a lot of read and react basketball. It’s really built on understanding what the defense is doing, understanding how they’re trying to take it away, understanding where we can attack and doing it in real-time. If you struggle to make those reads or understand what they’re doing and you can’t see it, you’re gonna have a hard time playing the way that we want to play.” 

Pickett’s proficiency in those pick-and-roll situations is something he had to acquire. The environment he walked into at Siena forced him to do so quickly. 

Pickett played for Jamion Christian during his freshman season at Siena, in an offense that Shrewsberry said mirrors what the Nittany Lions are doing now in regard to its dependence on ball screens. 

He’s learned from watching the best. Pickett often dials up Chris Paul tape in his free time, taking what he can from the timeless NBA guard who has forged a career with 11 All-Star appearances out of ball-screen expertise.

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“I wasn’t really good on the ball screens coming out of high school,” he said. “I think I was really good in college, definitely watching and learning because people switch up their ball screen coverage every game, depending on who we’re playing and what the guards do. One team might hard edge one game, then the next they might ‘ice’ it. You never know what they’re gonna do.

“You have to be able to read and adjust and really have chemistry with the big you’re going into the ball screen with. If the guard is on one page and the big’s on another, it really gets messed up. So me and John [Harrar] try to figure out the chemistry that we have on the ball screens, me and Greg [Lee], me and Jalanni [White]. We gotta really figure it out. All of us watch film together to be on the same page.” 

In many ways, Harrar, Penn State’s standout big man, is the perfect complement to Pickett. He excels at setting screens. Pickett thinks he’s open just about every time he comes off one of Harrar’s picks. 

The result has been one of the more efficient offenses Penn State has produced in recent seasons. The Nittany Lions shot 44.7 percent through their first 15 games — a rate they’ve matched once since the turn of the century. 

Even on the possessions where the offense does break down, Pickett can produce the goods. 

He’s been a late shot clock hero for the Nittany Lions on numerous occasions. Heaves, fadeaways, improvisations — it doesn’t matter, they all seem to go in. 

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“He don’t work on this,” Penn State forward Seth Lundy said of Pickett’s shot-making ability. “He’s just a basketball player. He’s put in the time and the work and it rewards him. You can’t cheat the game of basketball.”

Indeed, Pickett confirmed that the crazier buckets he’s scored have involved some quick thinking and a little bit of good fortune.

“I think just knowing I’m going to shoot it,” Pickett said. “If the clock’s running down, you just have to get a good shot, knowing that there’s no pressure on you. I actually practice some of those shots I take at the end of the shot clock. They’re not all crazy shots. There are some crazy ones, but some of them I do practice. And it’s just luck. Hopefully I can keep making them for the rest of the season.” 

Even if he doesn’t, his impact on this team and the start to Shrewsberry’s tenure in Happy Valley is plain for all to see. 

Penn State was far from his only option. A sought-after name in the transfer portal last offseason, Pickett reportedly received interest from the likes of Michigan, Gonzaga, and Baylor — all teams which reached the Elite Eight of last season’s NCAA Tournament. 

Laying the foundation for something new appealed to him, as did the offense he’s now flourishing in. 

“I’m extremely happy with my choice,” he said. “I think I’ve made some lifelong friends here. And then changing the program, putting it in the right direction with how Coach Shrewsberry wants to play, putting it in a winning perspective is how I wanna leave this program. And I just love State College, in all honesty. It’s going great so far, and it’s a lot left to build.”