“He’s always smiling for no reason,” Penn State forward Seth Lundy said of teammate Jalen Pickett with a laugh.
And Lundy isn’t wrong, Pickett is a cool costumer. Even as he carries the burden of being Penn State’s offensive catalyst and the engine that drives the Nittany Lions’ attack, Pickett rarely seems flustered or overly emotional. He’s just hooping, and the rest is taking care of itself.
“I’m just grateful. I mean, I love playing basketball,” Pickett said earlier this summer with his trademark smile. “I love being around my teammates. Just blessed. I feel like I’m living the dream right now. I’m still writing my own story and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next. I’m living in the moment and I’m enjoying every day.”
Nearing the midway point of his second season at Penn State after transferring from Siena, Pickett has truly found his stride averaging a career-high 16.2 points per game while also shooting a career-high 55% from the field. All of this to go with a whopping average of 7.5 assists per game, the fourth-best mark in all of Division I men’s basketball. Pickett’s scoring average is the best among the Top 5 players in assists per game and marks the third time in his career he has averaged more than six helpers per contest all while fewer than two turnovers per game, the nation’s sixth-best assists to turnover ratio.
But of course having confidence in yourself and actually making good on that confidence are two very different things. During the 2021-22 season Pickett showed flashes of both what he could bring to the table and flashes of why there is so often a learning curve when changing conferences. Things are hard in the Big Ten for a reason, but when it was all said and done Pickett was proving he belonged, a truth that has only become even more obvious this year.
“It actually felt really good,” Pickett said of getting his feet under him last year. “I came out the gates a little slow last year and wasn’t shooting as well. But I just didn’t get down on myself. My teammates kept believing in me and I think that’s a big thing, that things might be rocky at the beginning but as long as you stay the course and we get everybody on the same page hey’ll be good. I just always have faith in myself faith in God that everything will work out.”
And oh lord has it worked out. Pickett is everything Penn State has needed him to be this year. Calm, cool, collected, accurate with the ball and reliable with his post-up game that has turned him into a near automatic scorer in some situations. If Pickett has the ball and his back to the basket he’s getting the points be it through footwork, shooting or the free throw line.
If he doesn’t, or if the Nittany Lions find themselves falling behind, Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry also knows he’ll find a guiding hand in every huddle, just waiting for the next play.
“You don’t see a lot of emotion from him,” Shrewsberry said on Thursday. “[…] He’s talking a lot in the huddle, we’re communicating, he is communicating with his teammates. But there’s also kind of a calming influence for everybody as well. When you think things are going haywire, and it’s going in the wrong direction and it’s going downhill fast. And then you look over and he’s just like [shrugs shoulders calmly] maybe we are okay. Like this guy’s not panicking so we should be okay. I think you need that from from somebody. And he provides that for us.”
Don’t confuse calm for indifference though, as Shrewsberry pointed out in closing, calm on the surface doesn’t mean there aren’t emotions and passions burning just underneath it. You don’t end up being as good as Jalen Pickett because you’re indifferent, but you might end up becoming a killer offensive player because of your steady hand in moments when things don’t feel so steady.
“Something’s burning,” Shrewsberry said of calm players’ competitive spirit. “Like they want to they want to tear your head off, but they might not show you that all the time.”
