Penn State determined to implement 'point-five' basketball in return

The Penn State men’s basketball program is, at last, returning to its home court.

Set to host Iowa on Monday (7 p.m., BTN) in a rematch between the two teams just nine days ago, the Nittany Lions are excited to finally be back. Ending a layoff of 20 days between home games, last hosting Rutgers on Jan. 11 before a stretch of three road games at Ohio State, at Iowa, and at Indiana in the time since, the return carries with it a significant hope.

Losing all three road games, Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry is determined to secure a win.

“You have to see what you’re doing well, what you’re not doing well, where your areas were that you can improve on,” Shrewsberry said on his weekly radio show. “But we have a standard in terms of how we want to play and what we want to do. We need to hold each other accountable as coaches, players, teammates, whoever it may be, in terms of helping each person reach that standard. 

“And sometimes you need to get back to what you do best and get back to the standard of what that is. A lot of that’ll happen here in practice.”

Improvements needed for Iowa

Dropping to 8-9 on the season, including a 3-6 mark against Big Ten competition, Shrewsberry has a specific approach in mind for his Penn State team in doing so.

Struggling offensively, averaging just 54.6 points per game in Penn State’s most recent stretch of losses, the grind-it-out style has created a secondary effect. Connecting on just 58 of 164 shots, that has meant a paltry 35.3 percent hit on shots from the floor. 

So despite searching for the best shot, the process of getting there has been too slow.

“A couple of days ago in practice, we talked about playing point-five basketball. That’s something that Gregg Popovich would say with the Spurs and his best teams is they would make quick decisions with the basketball,” Shrewsberry said. “So I catch it, I’m going to either shoot it, I’m going to pass it, or I’m going to drive it north-south towards the basket within point-five seconds of catching it. 

“It’s making quick decisions. We want to try and play that way.”

Penn State’s next steps

Coming out of a bloodletting at Indiana last Wednesday, trailing the Hoosiers by 29 points at the half, Shrewsberry said his Penn State team started turning the corner toward that style in the second half. 

Managing to cut into the ultimate losing deficit with a 40-28 advantage in the second half, the elements of Penn State’s next steps began to take shape.

“You saw segments of us playing point-five basketball in the second half,” Shrewsberry said. “The ball would swing and swing to somebody else, they would shoot it or they would drive it, they would help, they’d kick it, throw an extra pass, drive it again, help would come, kick-out three. And we need to get more of that. More and more of that. 

“But when that was happening, you’d see how hard we were cutting, how hard we were playing, how hard we were attacking. It was just unfortunate that we started so late doing that.”

To keep it going, Penn State will need to do so against an Iowa program that dominated the first outing between the two teams.

Reversing a heavy rebounding deficit in a second-half blowout, the Hawkeyes flummoxed Penn State at every turn. And though Iowa returned to the court last Thursday night, losing 83-73 to Purdue, Shrewsberry noted that the impetus will be on his group to carry over its second-half performance at Indiana.

“They played off instincts. There wasn’t a lot of direction in terms of Hey, should I do this? Should I do that? They just played,” Shrewsberry said. “Once you start to get comfortable in something, then you start playing off instincts. And then once you start playing on your instincts, you can play fast and that’s what we want to do, especially offensively and defensively.”