Penn State basketball: Sam Sessoms feels Micah Shrewsberry's impact on opening night outburst

Penn State guard Sam Sessoms will be the first to tell you that he’s stubborn. He likes to talk back. He argues with his teammates at times.

“That’s just my competitive nature,” he said. “That’s how my environment was growing up.”

Sessoms made a conscious effort to eliminate that heading into his senior season — his first with head coach Micah Shrewsberry. Shrewsberry’s experience with the NBA’s Boston Celtics has made it easier for Sessoms to buy in.

He reaped the benefits in Penn State’s 75-59 win over Youngstown State in Wednesday night’s season opener. Sessoms posted 17 points, eight assists and five rebounds, shooting 50 percent from the field and turning it over just twice.”

“The level he came from, when he was coaching with the Celtics he would just tell us how they would take advantage of a mismatch,” Sessoms said. “He’s always drawing sets to get a mismatch. Our team, we have an old team so we’re very high IQ. A lot of the guys on the team know I’m really good at beating people off the dribble. So I’m kind of like the guy they look for when we need a paint touch or something like that. But Coach Shrews definitely does a great job. Even at times when I’m not thinking about it, he draws something up for me.”

Sessoms was key for the Nittany Lions late in the game, racking up four buckets in a row around the 10-minute mark of the second half when the Penguins made a charge to cut their deficit to single digits.

Penn State held them off and padded the lead from there, largely thanks to Sessoms.

“Sam made great plays for us down the stretch,” Shrewsberry said. “He’s making plays at the rim, but when people come and help, he’s finding guys on the perimeter. I think that’s an area of growth for him, where you see improvement from last year and he’s bought into what we’re trying to do. And you see it each and every day.”

Sessoms, a senior beginning his second season at Penn State, had never tallied more than six assists in a game for the Nittany Lions before Wednesday.

Perhaps more notable than that landmark, Sessoms distributed the ball without giving it away. Last season, he averaged nearly a turnover for every assist.

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Against Youngstown State, that ratio leveled off at a much healthier four-to-one.

He offered plenty of praise for Shrewsberry’s impact, calling his knowledge of the game “crazy.”

In turn, Sessoms has proved willing to put in the extra work. If Shrewsberry asks him to watch extra film, he does it. If Shrewsberry suggests getting extra shots up, Sessoms does that too.

Recruits have often pointed toward Shrewsberry’s NBA experience as a selling point, but it’s clear that it carries a certain cachet with the players on the current roster as well.

Sessoms knows Shrewsberry has a reputation for developing guards. He pointed out that Celtics always seemed to have two or three all-star caliber ball handlers on their roster.

If Shrewsberry had his body, Sessoms speculated, he’d be able to match his performance on Wednesday night simply because of his basketball IQ.

“in the short amount of time that I spent with Coach Shrews, I’ve learned so much in every aspect,” he said. “I can feel his presence as a coach improving my game.

“I truly believe that he’s gonna make Penn State one of those schools as far as basketball — I just got a lot of faith, and the rest of the team does also…Later on this year, years after that when we’re winning, doing things like that, we were the foundation of it. So you can’t take that away from us.”