For new coach Shrewsberry, the journey has been everything
Penn State might not be the final stop for Micah Shrewsberry, but it is definitely the most important one for a basketball coach who has paid his dues 10 times over.
Shrewsberry, 44, was officially introduced as the Nittany Lions’ new men’s basketball coach Tuesday, and was especially proud of the journey he took to get there.
“I had to grind it, you know, as the kids like to say, through the mud,” he said. “That’s how I got it. I coached in Division III, I coached in Division II, I coached at the NAIA level. You know, I was the head coach for two years at the NAIA level [Indiana University South Bend] and I still did our team’s laundry. I still went out and swept the floors if we needed to. I drove the van to the game.
“Nothing within my journey has been sexy.”
Until now.
He just doesn’t want to project that image to his athletes.
“That’s the journey I talk about, that’s the ups and downs, that’s the grind,” he said. “But that’s who I want to be. That’s who I want my program to be — like nothing comes easy to us. We don’t want anything. We don’t expect anything, we’re going to work for everything, and that’s who we want to be.
“That’s who I am.”
Shrewsberry also learned a long time ago to embrace a role in which he had no interest.
“When I was in college, I wanted to be a college basketball coach because I didn’t want to teach,” he admitted. “So that eliminated high school for me. Now that’s no knock on teachers, I just didn’t think I was cut out to teach as the everyday grind that goes into being a teacher, the constant supervision. the constant learning, just everything.
“Now, 20 years later, I am a teacher. That’s who I am, that’s what I do. I teach this game.”
At every level.
Shrewsberry was an assistant at the Division I level at Butler and Purdue and was on the Boston Celtics staff for six seasons.
So what will he drill into his Penn State teams?
“We’ll do a lot of read and react,” he said. “We’ll do a lot of drilling situations, making the right pass, making the right play. How we want to play it will be a little free flowing. I’m really big on spacing, giving each other a chance to make plays by getting out of each other’s way a little bit, but also putting the onus on those guys to make the right play when it presents itself. But we’ll work on it over and over and over in practice, so now the game becomes easy for them.”
Shrewsberry never discussed his political views, but his preferred style of play is pure socialism.
“With me, everybody needs to touch the ball, everybody needs to share the ball,” he said. “The ball needs to move from side to side. And if you’re doing that offensively, I think guys feel good about that, they feel good about the offense, they feel good about each other, making the right plays, which leads to them being more connected on the defensive end.
“I know that doesn’t explain really a whole lot. But I want to hold some stuff back so some of these other Big Ten coaches don’t know. They’re not worried about me, though. There’s a lot of good teams and a lot of great coaches in this league.”
Shrewsberry comes to a university where football rules everything and wrestling rules in the winter.
He knows where he stands in the food chain and is embracing that as well.
“I mean, you think of [football coach] James Franklin you think of a great man,” Shrewsberry said. “First and foremost, his energy, his excitement. I know my place in this university. I need him to help us recruit. That’s huge for me. I love it. I love college football. I’m a huge college football fan ... and being able to have a man like James Franklin, a coach like him to learn from, to pick his brain, to the good and the bad of this place ... I am just thrilled to have someone like that as well as the other coaches.
“Everybody here in this department has reached out to me and has welcomed me to this family, I think it’s a huge family in this athletic department that we can all work together. I have zero wins right now. And last week, two of our coaches hit 600 [Mark Pavlik, men’s volleyball] and 200 [Jeff Tambroni, men’s lacrosse]. That’s a long way away, but they were at zero at one point as well.”
The reality of Penn State basketball is that there has been minimal postseason exposure over the decades. The Nittany Lions have made the NCAA Tournament just twice in the last 20 years. Since moving to the Big Ten in the 199394 season, they have had just 10 winning seasons.
Happy Valley simply hasn’t been a men’s basketball destination forever. Just don’t try telling Shrewsberry that. “I think we can be great here if we uphold all the values of this university and uphold those values of who we want to be as a Penn State basketball team,” he said, “and I’m really excited to do that. When you talk about ... who we want to be and who we’re going to be, I want to be an underdog type of team.”
No worries there.