Micah Shrewsberry, in the parlance of our times, has got that dawg in him.
The, um, underdawg, that is.
“I’m one of the ultimate underdog kind of guys,” the Nittany Lions’ basketball coach told The Athletic’s Brian Hamilton last spring. “Toughness will make up for it. We may not be as big as other people. Just be tougher than them.”
This quote, occurring more in the postseason of Shrewsberry’s first year at Penn State than the preseason of his second, was more than prophetic about the current rendition of the Nittany Lions. The roster, as he noted, does not have a lot of size, and Shrewsberry has arguably made it even smaller by eschewing the center position altogether for large stretches of the game. Six-foot-4 senior wing Myles Dread, not unaccustomed to guarding fours at various points of his career, is often seen playing man defense on fives, including Purdue’s behemoth center Zach Edey.
