Penn State Basketball: After Promising Start, Nittany Lions Face a Grind Over Remaining Big Ten Schedule

Penn State men’s basketball sits at 8-7 on the year and 3-4 in Big Ten play with 13 regular season games remaining between now and the Big Ten Tournament.

At what amounts to the midway point in Micah Shrewsberry’s first year as head coach of the Nittany Lions, his tenure in State College certainly won’t be defined by what happens over those next 13 games, but he won’t be hurting his cause any with a good showing as the season rolls into its final two-month grind.

After losing to Ohio State and Michigan State earlier in the year, Penn State has certainly found its form over the most recent five-game stretch of conference play. The Nittany Lions have gone 3-2 over that span, losing those two games by seven and five points (No. 3 Purdue and No. 16 Ohio State, respectively), with both losses even closer than their finals scores.

Looking ahead the path won’t get any easier — if it’s ever easy in the Big Ten to begin with. Penn State will be on the road for four of its next seven games including a trip to No. 8 Wisconsin to open up its February schedule. Logistically the Nittany Lions won’t play back-to-back home games until the very end of February, in fact those back-to-back games are the only remaining home stretch of the season while Penn State will face opponents on the road in back-to-back games on two more occasions this year including a regular season ending stretch from Illinois to New Jersey over the span of three days.

So what does success look like for Shrewsberry and company from here on out? The Nittany Lions have played about as well as expected and Shrewsberry has done a solid job guiding his transfer portal heavy team to both solid victories and respectable performances in losses. That said, they’re a far cry from college basketball’s self-proclaimed mark of success of 20 wins, albeit it COVID-19 canceled contests against VCU, Delaware State and Quinnipiac don’t help that any.

Penn State has remaining home games against Nebraska, Northwestern, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota and Iowa. It’s a mixed bag across the league featuring a swath of current and recent success. Predicting wins in Big Ten basketball is nearly impossible, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to picture Penn State winning three of those games if not one more. Interestingly enough, Penn State plays Iowa twice in nine days with a clash at Indiana sandwiched between the two. The home meeting is the second of the two against the Hawkeyes.

On the road the Nittany Lions don’t have anything easy with Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maryland, Illinois, and Rutgers all set to host Penn State in the coming weeks. Again, predictions are impossible but getting a result or two out of that slate doesn’t seem wildly impossible given Penn State’s current form.

Whatever the case might be, the question of success remains for Shrewsberry and his staff. His program enters every game trying to win it, but every coach can see the differences in opponents, venue and the pure chance of the game. Nailing down a number or a postseason expectation with this particular team seems like a recipe for disappointment.

But how the Nittany Lions play might be more important.

“You have to kind of balance the two,” Shrewsberry said of expectations of winning every game and the pragmatism of playing in the Big Ten.

“You can feel good about the results. If you did everything you were supposed to do. If we prepare the right way, if we handle our business and practice every single day, the right way leading up to it. If we play a game – nobody is gonna be perfect, but if we do what we’re trying to do defensively if we do what we’re trying to do offensively[…]”

“Sometimes the shots don’t fall, sometimes you miss free throws, sometimes this that or the other, whatever it may be, but you put in total effort, total focus – then you can feel good about the results because you know, that you did everything possible. Sometimes you can do all that and you still don’t win, right? That’s where you got to be like, hey, we did everything possible.”

Shrewsberry’s approach to success might keep him from losing his mind at a job that has historically been an emotional strain for his predecessors. Of course being just over a dozen games into a job is not quite the same thing as a decade trying to drag a program up an impossibly steep hill.

Of course checking off all of those boxes – preparation, execution and effort – is easier said than done.

“I don’t think we did everything possible [against Ohio State]. We had an opportunity to win the game. There’s areas we got to clean up. If we’re cleaning things up and we’re doing things we’re supposed to and our shots don’t fall. Then I feel okay with it. Because I know we’re doing everything possible. So that’s where it kind of lays like, we’re giving ourselves a chance every night. You’re giving yourself a chance. Now cleaned it up, be better, now win those games. Tough teams win those games, good teams win those games.”