Penn State basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry looks to build trust — and a roster — in his first season
The first question Micah Shrewsberry was asked Tuesday at his introductory press conference as the new Penn State men’s basketball coach covered the subject that will define his first season at the helm — the NCAA transfer portal.
Shrewsberry saw six of his players reportedly enter the portal within 48 hours after being named the Nittany Lions’ new coach, with only one — guard Izaiah Brockington — announcing his plans to return to Penn State thus far.
While Shrewsberry will be entering uncharted territory at the Division I level, he’s not coming in unprepared to handle the situation at hand.
“This is a unique time in college basketball,” Shrewsberry said. “There’s more transfers in the portal today than there were last year the entire time. And it’s a unique time to come in as a head coach. I’ve talked to every single one of the guys that have entered and we are actively trying to get them back. We’re talking to them, we’re having conversations, face to face, over Zoom on FaceTime. But we are actively recruiting as well. My goal is to have a great team in place when it’s time to tip off next season.”
His relationships with his players and his ability to earn their trust will be crucial to his success as he seeks to build a roster in his first year as the program’s head coach.
He’ll need to make strides in those relationships — whether they’re with incoming transfers or returning players — because he only has three rotation players currently set to return next season in Brockington, Myles Dread and Sam Sessoms. Two of those returners come from an area that’s been crucial to Penn State’s recruiting in recent years in Southeast Pennsylvania and Philadelphia.
That area — and the Philadelphia Catholic League — has produced most of the talent that has played at Penn State in the past decade under former head coach Pat Chambers, including two of the highest-rated recruits to play basketball with the Nittany Lions in Tony Carr and Lamar Stevens.
That area has been good to Shrewsberry in the past, as well, including recently with the commitment of four-star guard Jameel Brown to Purdue — who has since decommitted after the new-Penn State coach’s departure — but that won’t be the only area he focuses on when it comes to building the roster.
“Philadelphia has been a good place for Penn State here lately,” Shrewsberry said. “And I think we continue to find the right players. Whether they’re from Philadelphia, whether they’re from Pittsburgh, whether they’re from Harrisburg, wherever it may be, I think we need to have a base of where we recruit from. When you have a school like Penn State, a name like Penn State, (with a) large alumni following and base, I think we can stretch our recruiting out to a lot of different areas.”
While the new head coach can expand the program’s recruiting footprint, especially with his ties to the Midwest from his many years in Indiana, he has clearly made Philadelphia a priority based on his first staffing hire.
Adam Fisher was the first hire announced by the Nittany Lions, and he’ll bring plenty of Philadelphia ties as the team’s associate head coach. He’s a former Nittany Lion student manager, graduate manager and later a video coordinator and director of player development at his alma mater, but also spent time at Villanova under Jay Wright.
Fisher spent the past six seasons as an assistant coach at Miami and helped recruit one of the best Pennsylvania recruits in the past ten years — current San Antonio Spur Lonnie Walker IV — to the Sunshine State. His recruiting acumen will be important in keeping the Philadelphia pipeline open as an assistant.
“He was somebody I zeroed in on quickly,” Shrewsberry said. “He came highly recommended. He’s a great basketball mind, he’s a people person and he bleeds Penn State. He believes in this place and he believes in doing special things. It was an easy choice for me. ... He was No. 1 on my list. I’m so thrilled he said yes.”
The new head coach has two more positions to fill on his coaching staff, but between Fisher and himself, they should be able to maintain some level of success in Philadelphia in the future.
In the meantime, he and Fisher will need to build its roster for next season — including recruiting those in the portal to return. Shrewsberry knows that process will take time, and doesn’t expect it to play out overnight.
“Trust is built over time,” he said. “With our players, when I talked to them for the first time, I didn’t expect them to jump through the video screen and say, ‘Man this is our coach, we love him.’ It’s going to take time. It’s gonna take a lot of conversations. I want to give them that time, I want to have that time, and that’s how you build trust. You build trust by showing people that you care over and over and over again. Then they start to feel like you have their best interest at heart. That takes time.”
He’s spoken publicly about building trust but now he must put it into action with his team. That’s the first step to taking Penn State to heights it hasn’t achieved in a decade — the NCAA Tournament. Because in the end, whether he does it with a roster similar to last year’s or a brand new one, that is the new standard set by Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour.
“We can — and will — do in men’s basketball at Penn State what we’ve done almost entirely across the board in Penn State athletics,” Barbour said. “And that is to compete for Big Ten titles and to get to the NCAA Tournament consistently.”
