Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1495456
A P R I L 2 0 2 3 4 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M T he first season for Micah Shrews- berry at Penn State was predicated on survival. He had taken over a program in disarray, and his approach to roster construction was not so much the purposeful pursuit of a vision as an attempt to attract the required number of participants to field a team. There was some begging and plead- ing involved. Shrewsberry and his staff needed players, both on the roster and in the transfer portal, to buy into a belief without evidence. And though the Nit- tany Lions did suffer some losses, they also accrued their share of wins, with forwards John Harrar and Seth Lundy and guards Sam Sessoms and Myles Dread all opting to return. The addi- tion of point guard Jalen Pickett, an All- Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference per- former at Siena, meant that the Nittany Lions could compete on a foundation of defense. One year later, the image of Penn State basketball under Shrewsberry's direc- tion is markedly different. The Nittany Lions have just completed a historic season. They went 23-14 for only their 12th 20-win campaign in the program's 127-year history. They reached the Big Ten Tournament championship game for only the second time since the tour- ney was launched in 1998. They returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011 and earned their first win there since 2001. Along the way, they saw Pickett become the program's first All-American in 69 years. 'This Group is Different' How did this happen? One way to understand Penn State's emergence in March as one of the nation's more dan- gerous teams, is to revisit its origin story. Last year was all about defense. Penn State led the Big Ten in scoring defense, surrendering only 65 points per game. "We could really guard people, prob- ably because that's all we did in the summer and the fall and in practice all the time," Shrewsberry said. "But this [2022-23] group is different. We just have a lot of weapons we go to and mix it up, and I think that makes us hard to guard. It makes people think I'm a really good coach because I've got really good players sitting next to me." What Shrewsberry failed to mention, with Pickett, Lundy and sharpshooting transfer guard Andrew Funk, all seniors, sitting to his right during a Round of 32 NCAA Tournament pregame press con- ference, was his role in bringing and keep- ing players in the program. More impor- tant, once at Penn State, Shrewsberry and his staff insisted that specific players own specific roles that could unlock a potential greater than anything they had individu- ally achieved to that point in their careers. MEETING THE MOMENT Nittany Lions' Stretch Run Fuels One Of The Greatest Hoops Seasons In School History NAT E BAU E R | NAT E . B AU E R @ O N 3 . C O M Super senior guard Jalen Pickett became only the second Nittany Lion ever to earn second-team or higher All-America honors, joining Jesse Arnelle, a first-team All-American in 1954 and a second-teamer in '55. PHOTO BY DANIEL ALTHOUSE MEN'S BASKETBALL