Penn State, Micah Shrewsberry push through after setback

The next day arrived for Micah Shrewsberry and the Penn State men’s basketball program on Monday. Late Sunday night, it might not have felt like it.

Dropping a 59-56 decision to Rutgers at the Bryce Jordan Center, the Nittany Lions suffered a significant setback to their NCAA Tournament aspirations. That it happened at home, in a game Penn State led by as many as 19 points in the second half, furthered the disappointment. 

But, returning to the BJC media room to meet with reporters before practice on Monday afternoon, Shrewsberry insisted the only path was forward.

“I’m fine, as the day’s gone on,” Shrewsberry said. “I wasn’t fine last night. I wasn’t fine this morning. But, as the day’s gone on, you bounce back from things. That’s the thing that happens when there’s disappointment.”

For a Penn State program still seeking a March Madness berth, its first since 2011, that bounce-back is on an expedited timeline.

The Nittany Lions return to action Wednesday for a 9 p.m. tip at Northwestern. And, at 17-12 for the season, with an 8-10 mark in Big Ten competition, all reasonable paths to the postseason demand a win in Evanston, Ill., to get there. 

Here is a look at some of the news and notes to emerge from Penn State’s Monday session with Shrewsberry, and how the Nittany Lions plan to do it:

Penn State pushing through

Expressing his disappointment as one tied to letting others down, particularly the team that has invested so much this season, Shrewsberry said his frustrations in himself were tied directly to the feeling as though his players deserved better.

However, he also said that the most direct path to earning that future success was through the resolve and dedication again shown today.

“I don’t want to let these guys down and they deserve it. But you go throughout the day today and you look, Seth was up here shooting late last night, he was back this morning. Funk was in the gym earlier. Different guys are here,” Shrewsberry said. “They’re back, they’re working. And there’s no quit in this group. There is absolutely zero quit in this group. We’re going to go out here and practice and get ready to play our next game on Wednesday.”

Finding the good

Penn State’s loss wasn’t all bad. Building a 40-21 lead in the opening minutes of the second half, the Nittany Lions forced Rutgers out of rhythm offensively and hit shots at every level of the floor. 

During a death-by-a-thousand cuts in the second half, though, the slow-rolling avalanche of missed shots and missed defensive assignments ultimately relegated the Nittany Lions to the losing column. Unable to respond and make the one or two plays that might have been the difference in a one-possession game, Shrewsberry said the time for introspection is now.

“We had moments, we had opportunities that if one thing happens, that could have been the difference. Who knows? That was the thing there,” Shrewsberry said. “We did good things. There are things that we can build off of from how we played yesterday. We need to see both sides of it. We need to look and see what we can do better and how we can be better. 

“I thought I did that. I had time last night to really go back and watch it, and come up with a plan for if this happens again, this is how we’re going to attack it. This is what we’re going to do. And then relay that to our guys so they have the confidence in what we’re going to do in this next moment, this next opportunity. So you learn from the bad, you take the good parts, and you build off of that. Now you try and put it together for 40 minutes.”

Handling the blitz

Shrewsberry produced a full accounting of his team’s inability to handle the hard hedge and blitz that Rutgers threw at Pickett on the perimeter in the second half in the immediate aftermath of Sunday evening’s game.

Monday, asked whether there were new issues that emerged in his rewatching of the game, he doubled down on a problem that has plagued Penn State from reaching its full potential offensively in recent weeks.

“We got to get back to moving the ball better. We didn’t move the ball very well in the last few games. Our assists numbers have been down. We haven’t been attacking. We haven’t been moving, extra passes. I can count on one hand the amount of extra passes that we had,” he said. “That’s when we’re at our best. That’s when we’ve been really good, when the ball moves quickly. People have made quick decisions. It swings, it swings, it swings, and guys are attacking. That’s when our offense is at its best. It hasn’t been that way last few games. I can’t say the last few games. It’s been more than the last few. We got to get back to playing like that.”

At the heart of that issue, he continued, is the notion of playing an aggressive, attacking style offensively. 

Needing to be prepared to handle defensive adjustments and quickly diagnose the right plays to make at the right times, Shrewsberry noted in the postgame that Northwestern’s defense would likely present the same look as the Scarlet Knights. And, he followed Monday, Penn State would be prepared for it.

“That makes us harder to defend and that gets us attacking more so we’re in attack mode more and there are more people that you have to worry about, more people you have to cover. We have to build off that. We needed to make quicker decisions,” he said. “That’s what the hard hedges with the blitz does to you. It forces you to make quick decisions. If you don’t make quick decisions, then people get back. They don’t have to rotate as much because it’s a split second. Then they get back to their man. You got to make a decision in that time. So we need to be better at that. We’re gonna work on that and we’ll be better next time we see it.”