Penn State's Micah Shrewsberry reflects, looks ahead following first year

Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry can exhale.

Coming off his first year leading the Nittany Lions, the program’s accomplishments were plentiful. 

Finishing 14-17 overall, Penn State won nine games against Big Ten competition. Five were against teams now headed to the NCAA Tournament. The season was capped with a nice run to the conference tournament quarterfinals, winning first- and second-round games. Led by strong defense, the Nittany Lions allowed just 66.2 points per game against conference competition. It was the best in the Big Ten.

Maybe most notably, Penn State proved to be fiercely competitive against a strength of schedule rated 20th nationally. 

The moment will inevitably be short-lived for Shrewsberry and his program, though.

As fiercely competitive as his Penn State team proved to be, many of its losses will leave a lingering sense of missed opportunity. Among 17 total losses for the season, 10 were decided by seven-or-fewer points. Four of those were against ranked opponents. 

Meeting with the media Tuesday afternoon to reflect on his first year at Penn State, and the season that closed with a 69-61 loss to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament late Friday night, Shrewsberry acknowledged the dichotomy of the moment.

“I was pleased with some of the parts of our season,” he said. “I was pleased with how we defended. We ended up being number one in the Big Ten in defensive scoring.

“How we competed, in terms of how we played, establishing the culture, I’m pleased with. There are other areas where I think we can get better, which I think we will. (Those things) we’ll have a chance to work on more and spend more time correcting as we go on here.”

Let’s take a look at what else stood out from Shrewsberry’s season-ending press conference:

1) A chance to “revisit everything”

Shrewsberry acknowledged the necessity of decompressing after the grind of the season.

Coming to a close with the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals loss, Penn State not invited to the NCAA Tournament or NIT, the Nittany Lions now have that opportunity. But with it, Shrewsberry said, also comes the chance to pivot into what’s next for the program.

“You get to this point in the season and you never want it to end. At some point in time it ends. You take a little bit of time to decompress from the season, but then you immediately jump back into what changes you want to make, what you can do better,” Shrewsberry said. “I think that’s the process right now, and the phase of what I’m in is what we can do better as we start heading into next year.

“Then it’s about building our roster out the right way. (It’s about) making sure we have all the pieces that we need so we can be ready to compete again.”

2) Penn State’s roster construction

How that roster looks next season isn’t yet solidified, Shrewsberry said Tuesday.

What’s known is that John Harrar, Greg Lee, Jaheam Cornwall, and Jalanni White have exhausted their eligibility. Guard Jalen Pickett also announced his return for a super senior season next year. 

And set to join the program this summer are five Class of 2022 recruits including Jameel Brown, Kanye Clary, Demetrius Lilley, Evan Mahaffey, and Kebba Njie. 

But when asked specifically about Myles Dread and Sam Sessoms, Shrewsberry said discussions were still to be had. Both players have a remaining bonus year of eligibility available.

“Everybody needs a minute to get away from each other at the end of the year,” Shrewsberry said. “So we’ll get together and have more in-depth meetings in terms of what those guys want to do with their futures. But we haven’t had those discussions yet. It’s been more team stuff, more general. And we’ll get into that here in the next couple of weeks.”

3) Transfer portal approach

At present, Penn State would have one scholarship available for the 2022-23 season with no movement from the current roster.

While Shrewsberry has maintained his intention to build his Penn State program relying heavily on the traditional high school recruiting model, he did acknowledge that they’ll again look to the transfer portal this offseason to help fill immediate needs. And that immediate need, he said, has everything to do with the true freshmen set to join the program. 

“For next year’s team, we do want to add a couple of older guys. So we don’t have to lean on those freshmen just to be primetime players right off the bat, which is really hard to do as a college freshman,” Shrewsberry said. “No matter how good you are, freshmen struggle a little bit, and freshmen struggle at times. 

“So we just want some guys with them that can relieve that pressure from them. So they can grow on their own timeline. I think similar to how you saw Dallion (Johnson) used year. He grew into becoming a more prominent player for us. That’s what our hope is for these freshmen.

“I hope they’re ready right away and they come in and take the reins and do it themselves. But we want to make sure we have the help that they need right away.”

Should Sessoms and Dread join Pickett, Johnson, and Seth Lundy next season, the Nittany Lions would return five players with at least 10 games of starting experience during the 2021-22 campaign.