Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry postgame press conference

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry wore a wry smile from the postgame podium late Wednesday night.

Topping No. 14-seed Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis, his No. 11-seed Nittany Lions weathered a rough first half offensively. Biding time, keeping the game close until late, the effort served as prelude to plunge the dagger into the Gophers.

The result was a 60-51 win for Penn State and the first career Big Ten Tournament win for Shrewsberry. With it, the Nittany Lions earn a second-round meeting with No. 6-seed Ohio State on Thursday night (9 p.m., BTN).

Led by 22 points from Jalen Pickett and a complementary 14 points from Sam Sessoms, Penn State suffocated the Golden Gophers defensively to earn the win.

What did Shrewsberry have to say about the effort? Check out his postgame press conference video, provided courtesy the Big Ten and Zoom, as well as his postgame transcript, provided courtesy ASAP Sports.

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry postgame press conference

Micah Shrewsberry postgame transcript highlights

On fighting through offensive stagnation in the first half:

“We just talked about it at halftime. I felt like we played a little bit rushed. We see what they do, right? We prepare for what they do and then you try and attack it, but sometimes it takes a little bit of time to see if they’ve changed something or to kind of settle into the game.

“I didn’t feel like we settled into the game in the first half. We were playing pretty fast, we weren’t allowing our screeners to get in the right position. We missed some shots around the rim that we usually make. So we just talked about really slowing down in the second half. And if you look at us throughout the season, the last 10 minutes of the game was when we played our best offense and you get to that point and I feel like we know where exactly we’re tracking, what shots we want to get, how they’re guarding us and we really settle into the game.

“Hopefully our defense can keep us there until we get to that point, and it usually does, it usually does. I’d love for us to play a lot better early on, but as long as it takes until we start clicking, that’s what we usually do.”

On earning a win away from the Bryce Jordan Center for the first time since January:

“I think we’ve played well at times on the road. We haven’t played 40 minutes consistently. We’ve played in stretches. We’ve usually hurt ourselves with turnovers in those segments, usually in the first half where now we’re a little bit sluggish or we’re behind and then we get down some and then we have to waste our energy fighting back or climbing back. But our guys stay with it.

“I told them before the game and I showed them, I was actually watching the Nebraska-Northwestern game and they said we led the Big Ten with nine losses six points or fewer. One, that’s tough, to lose those games. But it also shows you how resilient this group is that you keep bouncing back. It would be easy to just say we’re going to mail it in on the road, but they fight back and scratch and claw and do what they need to do to get it to a close game and then give ourselves a chance at the end.

“That’s what we want to continue. We live to fight another day and if it’s close, we’ll feel comfortable because we’ve been in a lot of close games this year.”

On Jalen Pickett’s performance for Penn State Wednesday:

“He’s a good player. Like if you go through and look, when I got the stat packet at the end of the season so I could do my all-conference voting, you look at leading scorers in our conference and he averaged about 14. Like his name’s in that list right in the middle. You look at blocks, you look at steals, you look at assists, you look at assists-to-turnover ratio, the guy’s all over the place in terms of what he does. He’s played that way pretty much the entire season. He was slow out of the gates and he struggled a little bit early, but once he got comfortable, he’s played that way.

“He’s a good player, he’s a good player. No matter what level you come from or where you went to originally, if you can play, you can play. And he can play. He plays at his own pace. He gets where he wants to go, he makes tough shots, he scores around the basket. They go under him, he steps back and hits a three. He makes the pass to John there late when he jumps up like he’s gonna shoot and dumps it down to him, like that’s savvy. That’s understanding the game, that’s understanding the situation. The guy doesn’t get rattled and the guy never comes out of the game and he like doesn’t complain one bit. That takes a lot, takes a lot of heart and he’s a competitor, he’s a warrior.”

On making an effort to get Pickett more touches:

“You look at it and it might be something that you see early, but you can’t go to it exclusively, right, and give them a time to adjust. There’s some things you’ve got to keep, you’ve got to hold. Like you see something, like we may run something. We ran a play at the start of the game and Dallion got a wide open shot, right? I’m like, we’re going to hold this and run it again in the second half. If I run it back to back, they’re going to know how to guard it, they’re going to think about it, right? They’re going to figure out what to do. Same thing with Pickett and those post-ups or whatever it may be, you’ve just got to hold some things and wait a little bit and be patient.

“If you do it before halftime a bunch, now they’ve got halftime to talk about it, now they’ve got this. If you wait a little bit, now they don’t have as many times to get in the huddle and meet and talk about what they’re doing and change up to different things. We’ve got a lot of tricks, I’ve got a lot of tricks up my sleeve. I know it doesn’t look like it when we’re balling out and getting 60 points or 52 points or whatever it may be. But every once in a while, I’ll throw a few tricks out there, we’ll get a bucket.”

On Penn State’s defensive effort in the second half:

“We’ve guarded like that all year, all year. Our guys, our assistant coaches do an unbelievable job of getting them ready. Like Adam Fisher had our guys ready, like we’re watching film and they’re calling out what’s coming next. Mike Farrelly has tomorrow and he’ll have our guys ready the same exact way. They do a great job of getting these guys ready.

“And then it’s all about our discipline defensively, right? You see me like lose my mind or it looks like I’m losing my mind. I know it looks like that a lot, but it’s usually things that we control defensively that we don’t do. When we do what we can control, we’re really good defensively. We make people take tough shots. We give them one shot and we go and rebound it, and our guys have done that all season. And they just dig in deeper and deeper and as the game goes on. You just keep wearing on people, wearing on people, wearing on people and hopefully you’re taking their legs.

“Now, some of those open 3s, it just doesn’t quite feel the same, right? Brad Stevens, this guy I used to work for, he used to always say that you just take away what they want to do best. You just squeeze the life out of people and now the one time they get that open 3, they haven’t seen it all game and it usually doesn’t go in because they’re not getting that shot that they normally get every single time. That’s what our guys are doing. They’re just taking away A and making you go to B. And then we’re guarding B as tough as possible and making you go to C, and now you’re not working on C. That’s a shot you’ve never practiced in your life. Now we’re contesting that shot, we’re challenging that shot, we’re hitting people on the glass. And then we’re going down the other end.”