Sunday Column: Casting Convention Aside, Nittany Lions are Finding Success on the Court While Being Firmly Themselves

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.

The Nittany Lions do have four scholarship players 6-7 or taller on the team, but those players—Kebba Njie, Caleb Dorsey, Michael Henn and Demetrius Lilley—have combined for a total of 469 minutes this season, which is 10 fewer minutes than Seth Lundy has played and 135 fewer than Jalen Pickett has played. So why would any coach willingly put his team at such an apparent disadvantage?

Because Shrewsberry, once an underdog point guard on a Division III team, is unafraid to be himself, and his Nittany Lions are following suit.

Penn State is not a diverse offensive team; it scores mostly on 3-point shooting (which accounts for 44% of all its points) and on an increasingly impressive array of drives into the paint by Pickett. The Nittany Lions don’t get to the line very often (Penn State has shot 26 fewer free throws than any Big Ten team despite playing two more games than the closest team on that list, Wisconsin), don’t have players other than Pickett and Cam Wynter who can consistently beat defenders off the bounce (though sparkplug freshman Evan Mahaffey is forcing his way into that conversation of late), and don’t seem to bother with mid-range shots. Low-post scoring? That’s Pickett, basically.

And with all that said, the Nittany Lions rank sixth in one of the nation’s best conferences in scoring, at 75.4 points per game, and sit tied for seventh in the standings at 3-3.

Every coach works with not the roster they want but with the roster they have, tweaking the game plans and the rotations to maximize those rosters’ strengths and mask their weaknesses. Shrewsberry has taken that to the extreme. His offensive system generates looks for open shooters or one-on-one opportunities for its guards and doesn’t force the issue. It’s working; the Nittany Lions lead the Big Ten in 3-point makes (though they are just 10^th in percentage) and, with veterans Pickett and Wynter doing most of the ball handling, have the league’s lowest turnover rate. The undersized defense, meanwhile, relies on communication, stout rotations and—yup—toughness.

Now, this steadfast, almost stubborn approach does come with some drawbacks, chief among them interior defense and game-to-game consistency. We essentially saw the Nittany Lions’ offensive floor and ceiling in the two games this past week, a loss to Purdue in which the offense was shut down in the second half by a swarming Boiler defense and an impressive win against a reeling Indiana squad in which Penn State knocked down 18 threes and did just about whatever they wanted on the offensive end. In both of those games, as in most the Lions have already played and that they will assuredly play going forward, opposing big men had their way in the paint.

But Shrewsberry knows that’s the price to be paid, and that he doesn’t mind giving a little at one end of the floor to confound opponents at the other end. Knowing the Nittany Lions are going to go five-out and let Pickett back his man below the basket for a bunny is one thing; stopping it is another. Being aware of where Andrew Funk is on the floor is one thing but finding him in transition situations or after switches is another.

There is some psychology at work here, too. By playing lineups without a true big man, Shrewsberry is forcing his players fully into the role of underdog, at least on defense, and that can have—and arguably has had—a galvanizing effect on the team. The other part is that by sticking to the formula against any and all opponents, the Nittany Lions are developing a sense of belief in themselves, in their coaches and in the formula itself that will serve them well down the stretch of tight games or in those inevitable stretches of Big Ten play where they go down big on the road or even at home.

Maybe in the not-so-distant future, the Nittany Lions will utilize a more conventional lineup, with a matured Njie patrolling the paint and a refined Lilley spelling him. They’ll still hunt quality threes but also shots from other parts of the floor, and they’ll get to the free throw line more than once or twice before the end of the game. Or maybe they’ll play five point guards, run a full-court press and never even touch the painted area.

Whatever they look like, you increasingly get the feeling that it will be on Shrewsberry’s terms, not the opponent’s. And, win or lose, that’s an unfamiliar but intoxicating feeling for followers of Penn State basketball.