As Penn State men’s basketball heads into the opening stages of Big Ten play the Nittany Lions do so with a unique statistical distinction to their name. No team in Division I basketball is making more three-point shots per game than Penn State.
So far this season the Nittany Lions are averaging 12.1 three-pointers per game, just .2 ahead of Chattanooga but No. 1 all the same. Penn State gets some of this by virtue of volume, the Nittany Lions shoot an average of 30.0 shots from beyond the arc per game, which is sixth-most in the nation. That said Penn State is also making 40.42 of those attempts, 14th best in the country and second-best among teams who have shot more than 200 threes this year. The volume is there, but so too is the accuracy.
It’s a unique situation that head coach Micah Shrewsberry finds himself in. That the Nittany Lions are so unashamedly who they are. After years and years of playing with an established big man and a more traditional balanced offense, here Penn State sits, looking to find shots from deep, and making them almost as often as they miss.
The result does create an interesting thought experiment. What happens if it works? What happens if Penn State’s foray into mass three-point shooting proves to be an effective equation? Basketball is traditionally a game of balanced inside and outside scoring. There are exceptions to that rule of course, but there’s a reason that given the opportunity to create a team from scratch, nearly every coach in America would throw in a capable big man. It’s also not as though Penn State is without scoring in the paint, or the ability to grab rebounds and develop the likes of true freshman Kebba Njie into a legate interior prospect. It’s just not how this group if engineered.
Then again the next month or two will go a long way towards proving if the bulk three-point shooting even really works in the first place against better teams. Fittingly Penn State’s foe this weekend, No. 17 ranked Illinois is the only team in the AP Top 25 to also fall in the Top 25 of three-pointers attempted this season. Michigan State, Wednesday’s foe attempts just 19.8 per game, 258th in the nation. But save the pessimism for later, what happens if it works? Does Penn State’s equation to victory change in the future? Yes and no.
“I think part of who you are as a coach, part of how you grow as a coach, you have to be able to evolve,” Shrewsberry said. “I think if you look from some of the coaches that have been around, the two guys I spent the most time with and Brad Stevens and Matt Painter, I think they both evolved as coaches and you have to do that because like if I have one set system and you know your guys don’t fit that system like what’s what’s the good of it.”
“What we have to do, what our program is always gonna look like, it’s gonna revolve around who our best players are, so whatever our best players do, that’s what we’re gonna do offensively. That’s what our strengths will be. So if it you know, if some seven foot 290 pound dude walks in here we’re probably gonna throw the ball into the post if he’s our best player, right?”
Penn State’s proclivity for shooting – and making – the three has made the Nittany Lions an entertaining bunch to watch this season, it will be interesting to see how that success translates into the gauntlet of Big Ten and see how that success molds Penn State’s recruiting focus in the future. Then again the only things Shrewsberry wants to see if the ball continuing to go in. The rest will take care of itself if that happens.
