How Penn State turned its season around to land in NCAA Tournament for first time since 2011
READ MORE
March Madness
Penn State men’s basketball is in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011. Read below for all of our coverage.
Expand All
Penn State sat in a room deep inside the United Center Sunday night and awaited its fate. Seniors littered the front row, including Seth Lundy and Myles Dread, two players who should already have NCAA Tournament experience on their resume.
They were Nittany Lions in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the postseason was canceled. That team was as locked in as it gets for a spot in the tournament but instead was left thinking about what could have been.
Sunday night, in Chicago, they received the payoff three years in the making.
The Nittany Lions heard their name called on Selection Sunday as a No. 10 seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
Dread and Lundy relished the opportunity and the moment, but they weren’t the only ones.
“That whole experience there was so tough for everybody,” Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “They were having an unbelievable season. They deserved to get a chance to do that. Same as (assistant coach) Mike Farrelly who had a great season at Hofstra and things got taken away from them and they didn’t get a chance to do it. Jalen Pickett in the same way, had won the conference tournament (at Siena) and didn’t get a chance to play in (the NCAA Tournament). It’s really cool, in a small way, to be able to honor those guys to get back. I’m glad that Myles and Seth are still here with us so hopefully those guys can feel a part of it.”
That long list will have a chance to make up for lost time on Thursday when they take on No. 7 seed Texas A&M in the first round.
One month ago that possibility was barely even on the table.
The Nittany Lions had just lost their fourth game in a row and sat at 5-9 in the Big Ten and 14-11 overall. Winning five of six games to end the season was a must for the team to even be on the bubble.
But it was around then that things began to turn. It wasn’t precisely after falling to 5-9, however. It was just before that, shortly after the team fell to Wisconsin on Feb. 8 to drop to 5-8 and 14-10. Last month, Cam Wynter recalled the silence of the locker room. Andrew Funk remembered getting yelled at by Farrelly for his angry reaction on the court during the loss.
For Dread, it was the wave as a whole that stood out after the bottom seemed like it may have fallen out.
“We just drew the line in the sand as a team,” he said. “What do we wanna do? We do we wanna be? We know that we’re not a losing team. We know that 5-9 in the Big Ten is unacceptable. That’s not who we are.”
The turn was evident in the fourth loss in a row, to Maryland on Feb. 11. Despite the defeat, the team looked more cohesive. There was a unity to the way the group played in the 74-68 loss that gave reason to believe there was something more to come.
Or as the Nittany Lions would say — they had more to give.
And give they did. A three-game winning streak and a five-game winning streak, sandwiched around a devastating 65-63 loss to Rutgers that tested the team’s resolve, have put this team a place the program hasn’t been in 12 years.
Even then, it was almost difficult for the Nittany Lions to celebrate. The selection announcement came less than an hour after they lost to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament title game. A game in which they had the ball with less than five seconds left, only down two.
The sting of that loss was evident for a team led by a head coach that will tell you just how poorly he takes losses.
“I’m really happy,” he said after the selection show. “It’s also different because we just lost a few minutes ago. I gotta put things in perspective. I’m a bad sport and I hate losing. But, you have to appreciate this. You have to appreciate what we’ve done and what these guys have done. Hearing your name called is special.”
That loss won’t have much say in how the 2022-2023 Nittany Lions are defined. Sure, a conference tournament title would have been a nice boost. But this was not a team with those type of external expectations — this week or this season. It was supposed to be a better team than last year’s that would give others trouble in the Big Ten.
Reaching the NCAA Tournament? Very few on the outside thought that would happen. Making the final of the Big Ten Tournament? Even this week that seemed unlikely.
But as players like Funk will tell you, this team came to win. It did not have any intention of leaving Chicago with a loss. Just as it doesn’t intend to lose when it heads to Des Moines, Iowa to face Texas A&M and potentially the winner of Texas-Colgate.
Penn State will surely be underdogs in both games, and likely face the same doubt it has all year.
But just as Illinois, Northwestern and Indiana found out during the Big Ten Tournament, this is not a team that is happy to be here.
It came to win. Breaking the NCAA Tournament drought will likely not be good enough for a team with a self belief that grew when it hit rock bottom in early February. It would be a surprise if they didn’t believe they can make the Sweet 16.
At this point, who would tell them they can’t?
This story was originally published March 12, 2023 at 9:17 PM.
