How Sam Sessoms rebounded from poor effort to lead Penn State men’s basketball in win
Sam Sessoms walked off the court after Saturday’s 74-67 loss to No. 3 Purdue knowing he hadn’t put forward his best effort and hadn’t done all he could to help his team win.
The Penn State men’s basketball senior guard played the fewest minutes of his career — seven — and for good reason.
“I just knew I had to step it up,” Sessoms said Tuesday night. “The game versus Purdue, I wasn’t on the bench angry, because I knew I wasn’t giving my best effort. I was just supporting my teammates from the bench. But I knew next game I had to come out there and play as hard as I can.”
Sessoms bounced back with a fury in the team’s 66-49 victory over Rutgers on Tuesday night, scoring 17 points to lead the Nittany Lions while playing 30 minutes and carrying the load offensively late in the game.
He had two days to stew over the poor effort he gave against the Boilermakers and spent most of that time frustrated with how that game played out and what he could do to rectify the situation.
“Honestly, mentally it’s just horrible,” Sessoms said. “I know my coaches expect a lot from me, I know my teammates expect a lot from me. Me knowing that I didn’t give my best effort, which is the thing you can control, it just eats me up until the next opportunity. I feel like I’m letting my teammates down in a selfish way because it’s nothing I can’t do. It’s all inner. The days just make you overthink things.”
Some players would have ignored the reasoning for the lack of minutes. Some would complain and be frustrated with how it played out rather than why it played out that way. That wasn’t the case for Sessoms, who knew what he had done and why he didn’t get to be on the court with his teammates.
The senior guard — who is unabashedly honest with himself and others — didn’t need a talking to from Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry or anyone else on the staff. He knew he deserved the limited minutes he got.
“I didn’t really say anything to him,” Shrewsberry said with a laugh. “He knew. I didn’t have to. Him playing nine minutes was the message. You need to be on board with what we’re doing and playing as hard as possible. ... There’s two things you can do. You can go in the locker room and you can be a locker room lawyer. You can go to somebody else that didn’t play and start talking like, ‘Hey man, how come you didn’t play? I didn’t play either. Yeah this coach is doing a terrible job. If we’d have played we might have won.’ Or you can come back and fix it.
“You can take ownership, you can look inside. That says a lot about his character, who he is as a person, his resiliency to just bounce back and play.”
Shrewsberry and staff trusted Sessoms enough to know he received the message without anything extra. The head coach delivered the primary message during the game and made sure his senior guard understood what happened.
Sessoms took that message to heart and put in the requisite effort — and then some — Tuesday night. He attacked the rim consistently, finding creases in the defense he could exploit to get himself open space. He shot open looks from deep, something he’ll occasionally pass up for a pump fake and a drive.
But most importantly, he found his teammates, finishing with six assists in the game — the most he’s had since he had eight in the season opener against Youngstown State.
The senior guard operates at his best with his teammates setting screens for him to get switches or to get space to attack and he emphasized that part of his game this week heading into the game.
“We actually did a lot of work on ball screen synergy,” Sessoms said. “We did a lot of drills just being patient. ... We did that all week. The connection, it has to be on point, and tonight it was.”
The synergy was obvious between he and his teammates Tuesday night. He would slither into the open space behind the screen when his defender took one step too many toward half court and would blow by them when they tried to go under the pick.
Sessoms looked like an offensive leader against Rutgers, a far cry from where he was mentally and how he played Saturday afternoon.
The Nittany Lions will need more of this Sam Sessoms if they want to continue their upward trajectory. His offensive impact is vital to a group short on primary ball handlers.
And if that version of Sessoms doesn’t show up in a matchup, his coaches and teammates can trust that he’ll do whatever he has to in order to resolve the situation on his own.
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 10:17 PM.
