How his past experiences put Penn State basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry in a position to succeed
It’s easy to point to the two head coaches Micah Shrewsberry learned under in the past 13 years and say they’re the reason he’s had his success. Shrewsberry has coached every year since 2008 under one of Matt Painter — 2011-13 and 2019-21 — and Brad Stevens — 2008-11 and 2013-19 — and gives plenty of credit to those two to for helping him earn the title he holds now as Penn State head men’s basketball coach.
But if you ask Stevens, it wasn’t just Shrewsberry learning from him. The Celtics head coach said he learned from Shrewsberry.
“That could not be further from the truth,” Stevens said about being Shrewsberry’s mentor on the Penn State welcome event live stream. “We have totally been on this journey together and it’s been so fun. If anything, I leaned from him for a lot of this. I always said when I came to Boston, after we spent time together at Butler, after knowing each other as players in high school and college, that he assimilated to the NBA a lot quicker than I did.”
Now in his first Division I head coaching role, Shrewsberry will be charged with choosing the best of all of the small things he’s picked up from Stevens and Painter over the past 13 seasons and using them to become a high-level head coach at Penn State.
Shrewsberry, of course, will have his own personality and style to impart as a head coach but still has a foundation to build on from Painter and Stevens.
“I couldn’t say enough about those two guys as friends, as people, before bosses,” Shrewsberry said. “... I learned so much from them. I have to be myself, but they taught me how to run a successful program. ... I’m forever grateful for their friendships.”
The Penn State head coach will have plenty of chances to convey his own techniques on and off the court, and that will likely start on the offensive end of the court.
He spent the past two seasons at Purdue as the team’s associate head coach under Painter, with his primary role as the offensive coordinator.
Shrewsberry was in charge of that end of the court and implementing a game plan for the Boilermakers’ offense every game. That role allowed him to blossom into the coach he is now.
“What I learned was, I took a lot of the things that I learned in the NBA,” Shrewsberry said, “about how to think on your feet pretty quickly, about how to adjust to how the defense is playing you. Really looking at the game through that lens and making the changes to put your team in the best position possible. And I thought we tried to do that. I don’t think you can be married to one certain way of playing, and then your players don’t fit that way.
“I think you need to be able to adjust. I think you need to be able to think on your feet, I think you need to be able to, on the fly, change things up. And that’s what I learned by just doing the offensive coordinator role at Purdue, and that’s what we’ll do here.”
Now it’s about implementing exactly what that system is on offense. Shrewsberry said the scheme will look similar to what he did in Boston. That will include spacing the floor, moving the ball and staying out of each other’s way to create an optimal shot.
Ultimately, however, the scheme will be reliant on the players making the right decisions and being in the right situations to find success as an offense.
That starts with Shrewsberry, who will have to teach his players exactly what he wants — a role he didn’t envision for himself two decades ago.
“I want to teach our guys how to play basketball,” Shrewsberry said. “... When I was in college, I wanted to be a college basketball coach because I didn’t want to teach. So that eliminated high school for me. That’s no knock on teachers, I just didn’t think I was cut out to teach. ... Now, 20 years later, I am a teacher. That’s who I am, that’s what I do. I teach this game.”
An efficient offense will be crucial for the Nittany Lions after 12 of the 14 teams in the Big Ten finished in the top 100 of Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted offensive efficiency — an estimate of the offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions) a team would have against the average Division I defense. That includes Penn State, which ranked No. 34 in the country in the metric, and Purdue, which ranked No. 26 in the country under Shrewsberry’s leadership.
However, he’ll need to make sure the team is even better on the other end of the court. All 14 teams in the conference finished in the top 100 of Pomeroy’s adjusted defensive efficiency — an estimate of the defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) a team would have against the average Division I offense.
That level of defensive play is not much of a surprise considering the Big Ten’s reputation as a defense-first conference. That wasn’t lost on Shrewsberry.
“We have to be a great defensive team,” he said. “To have a chance in the Big Ten, you have to be one of the top defensive teams in our league. ... You have to have a defensive mindset and that’s how you win in this league. I’ve had the chance to see it up close and personal these last two years.”
The marriage between both ends of the court will be key for Penn State, especially as it tries to implement a new system and style under a new head coach with the potential for plenty of roster turnover.
Shrewsberry is tasked with guiding that mission moving forward, but has the past to back up the idea that he’s the right man for the job. The new head coach understands the work that lies ahead, and is ready to be all-in along the way.
“I was the head coach for two years at the NAIA level for two years and I still did our team’s laundry,” he said. “I still went out and swept the floors if I needed to. I drove the van to the game. Nothing within my journey has been sexy.
“... That’s the journey I talk about. That’s the ups and downs, that’s the grind. That’s who I want to be. That’s who I want my program to be.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2021 at 11:33 AM.
