Penn State with Program Record in Sight Ahead of Big Four-Game Stretch

While Penn State men’s basketball certainly has bigger fish to fry, the Nittany Lions are set to break a bit of program history – likely as soon as Thursday – en route to trying to chase down an NCAA Tournament bid in the final weeks of the season.

The record in the question, the program’s single-season mark for made three-pointers. As of Tuesday afternoon the Nittany Lions have recorded 293 makes, one shy of the program’s mark which was set in 2018. While breaking a record of just a few years is hardly a parade-worthy achievement, it is at least – in theory – a testament to Penn State’s ability to successfully find players that fit the ever changing game of basketball. In 2018 former guard Shep Garner was responsible for a program-record 120 makes in a single season, right now Andrew Funk is the closest to that mark with 82 to his name. Seth Lundy is right behind with 71. Penn State as a team has four players with 35 or makes from deep.

As far as accuracy, Penn State’s 38.9% clip is likely going to come up a bit short of the program’s mark of 41.5% from deep but that record also came on the back of 171 attempts. This year Penn State has thrown up 754 shots from beyond the arc.

If you’re wondering, that level of accuracy is fairly elite for the volume, so far this season Penn State is the 11th-best three point shooting team in the nation while having attempted the second most threes of the teams in the Top 11. So even though Penn State is shooting more than everyone else, it’s still shooting better than most everyone too.

Hard to complain with that. Penn State also leads all Power Five teams in terms of total made threes, and stands to be one of the few teams in the nation to hit the 300 makes from deep in 2023. Lots of threes.

“But the strength of our team is our shooting and us being able to have multiple guys that can spread the floor that can shoot and move it to each other,” Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry said earlier in the year. “And you know, we have to buy into that and I think we’ve done a good job of doing it now. Other people also know what our strength is. Right? So their game plan is to try and take that away and I think that’s where we have to be really good is to take advantage of that. So I think that’s going to continue to be a growth process for us, knowing this is who we are, this is who we want to be and let’s continue to play to our style when people allow us to play that way.”

“We’re really hard to guard and we’re really hard to deal with. Now we’ve got to be the same exact way when they don’t allow us to do that, which some people are trying to do. Whether the ball goes in or not we’re gonna guard and we’re gonna give ourselves a chance [in every single game] so we don’t [just] play off our offense. We’re gonna guard you whether the ball is going in or not going in. We’re gonna give ourselves a chance.”

And while there might be a few games Penn State would like to have back, the Nittany Lions head into the final four games of the regular season with a chance to punch an NCAA Tournament ticket. Will it happen? Time will tell, but you can bet it’ll involve a few more threes.