How Penn State men’s basketball showed it’s blending eras under new coach Mike Rhoades
Penn State wasn’t just debuting a new head coach Monday night when it defeated Delaware State 79-45 in the Bryce Jordan Center.
It was debuting the beginning of a new brand of Nittany Lion basketball.
Gone were the “Gritty not pretty” spotlights that shined down on the court during the introduction, which left with the departure of former head coach Micah Shrewsberry. Gone too was the philosophy that led the program to the NCAA Tournament last season — one that relied on protecting the ball on offense and not trying to take it away too often on defense.
In its stead was a style and team that matched new head coach Mike Rhoades — an intense defense that relied on ball pressure and turnovers to ignite its offense — with those same expectations. Sure, Rhoades does not want a high number of turnovers, but they can be a side effect when teams plays as frenetically as his do.
Monday that manifested itself in some numbers that would have been season highs last year. The Nittany Lions forced 17 turnovers in the first half alone, which would have been the most the team had in a full game in 2022-2023. They also had 14 of their own, which would have tied the high water mark under Shrewsberry last year.
It was fitting that the stylistic differences were apparent, but even more fitting that the players who led the offense were two of the three scholarship holdovers — and five players overall — from last year’s team in Kanye Clary and Jameel Brown, who had 22 and 20 points respectively.
Those two will be tasked with bridging the last Penn State era to this one, while two Rhoades holdovers — Nick Kern Jr. and Ace Baldwin Jr., who followed him from VCU to Penn State — will be on the other side bringing the new players into the new coach’s culture.
“The five guys that were here, they open arms for the new guys,” Rhoades said. “Ace and Nick, they know me. They helped the guys understand, ‘hey this is how coach does things.’ So I’ve really just appreciated their approach with all of this.”
Brown and Clary have both taken on much larger roles than they had on last year’s senior-laden team when they were only freshman. Clary is a likely night in and night out starter who will have the ball plenty, while Brown scored 20 points for the first time in high school after he only scored 12 all of last season.
Their scoring was part of an offense that looked more modern than some of the previous offenses run by Rhoades at VCU. There was an increased emphasis on shots from deep with the team putting up 32 3-point attempts, which was more than the Nittany Lions had in all but two games last season.
It even included a refrain that was common from Shrewsberry last season.
“The one way we play is if a guy misses a shot, we’re not yanking him, we’re not pulling him,” Rhoades said. “We want guys to know they have the green light.”
The offensive style was one of the questions about Rhoades when he was first hired, and he passed the first test with flying colors. That doesn’t change, though, that his emphasis will start on the other end of the court.
He said that’s part of why Brown was able to find so much success against Delaware State.
“Put all of your attention on your defense,” Rhoades said. “You don’t have to make a shot to stay in the game, you have to play really good defense. When I got here I told him that. I said I already know you can play on the offensive end. You’ve got to be able to guard the ball, you’ve got to get through screens. .. If you do that, you’ll help us because you’re a weapon.”
Those similarities should all help this team reach its ceiling this year, whatever it may be, and Clary and Brown figure to be an important part of that. This is an old roster and those two have a good chance of producing for Rhoades and the program for three more years — with the chances of them leaving being tied to them developing so well that they play professionally sooner than expected.
Their buy-in and development is as important as anyone’s and if they hit their ceiling than the chances of Rhoades doing the same at Penn State increases drastically.
For now, though, the focus is on the minutia and even some of those differences were apparent.
“The main thing that was different was just the pace that we play at, Coach Rhoades style of playing fast, getting into people,” Clary said. “But besides that it’s just basketball at the end of the day. His goal is to win, our goal is to win, so that’s what we had to do.”
Despite how well the season opener went, it still doesn’t match the expectation from the head coach for what it will look like.
“We’re not even close,” Rhoades said. “We’ve got a ways to go. We’ve got a ways to go for what I think we can do, what we want to do.”
If he is right, there is reason to believe that this can be much more than a transition year for a first-year head coach.
