Every team in America has goals. Win a national title, make the postseason, improve on the year prior. The list goes on and on, but every team has something they’re gunning for. There’s a pragmatism to this of course, everyone wants to win a national title, but only a few teams can reasonably do it and those teams know who they are.
It’s an interesting question for Penn State men’s basketball and head coach Micah Shrewsberry as the calendar turns to 2022. It would be one thing if the Nittany Lions were young and growing, you can build towards something if that was the case.
But this Penn State team has four seniors who have no remaining eligibility, and three more seniors who may or may not opt to return in 2022. All told a roster of 15 players could see effectively half of that same roster leave the program in the next six months, not to mention the ever present threat of transfer portal departures.
This roster construction was largely by design of course, Shrewsberry has frequently said in his short tenure at Penn State that winning requires experience and age, his gun-for-hire approach to the transfer portal this offseason reflected that with the addition of four players with senior eligibility.
Of course Shrewsberry’s hand was largely forced following the mass exodus last offseason in the wake of Pat Chambers firing and Jim Ferry not being retained after a year as the interim head coach.
But in terms of building a program it does pose an interesting question for Shrewsberry and a roster full of players who might be gone as quickly as they arrived. What is the goal here exactly? Add in injuries, COVID stoppages and the challenges of Big Ten play and this year doesn’t lend itself kindly to momentum building.
“For us, I think it’s how we play how we compete,” Shrewsberry said earlier this month. “That’s what it has to look like, right? Whether guys are here or not, the standard of how we play, the standard of who we are. Whether that’s in the locker room, on the court, in the community, whatever. That’s what we’re trying to set right now. And you can leave a legacy, whether you’re here for years or whether you’re here for months.”
There’s a lot of truth to what Shrewsberry said when asked the broader question of season goals. Penn State’s attitude era under Pat Chambers may not have included Stone Cold, but from the first opening tip it included finding players that wanted to give the extra effort. While the Nittany Lions struggled in the opening years of Chambers’ tenure, they laid the foundation of how Chambers’ teams were going to play for years to come.
This could be particularly true during a season that seems poised to have its fair share of COVID cancelations and stoppages. It also puts an extra emphasis on how Shrewsberry handles losing, winning and everything in between. How do players respond to adversity? How does Shrewsberry handle injuries? How does he manage the game and situations within it?
In many respects how Penn State plays, and how Shrewsberry manages everything will end up being far more important than the results themselves. Yes the Nittany Lions are trying to win, but if half the roster is going to be gone in six months the takeaway from the season is going to be harder to parse. It doesn’t really matter how Greg Lee played at the end of the season, or how well Jalanni White evolved over the course of the year. Of course it matters, but it also doesn’t.
The things that matter will be the tone they set for the players behind them, and how Shrewsberry guided his team through the season’s obstacles – because there will be more of them.
“You can do something positive in a program. And that’s what we’re trying to get from these guys that are here. You know, they’re a part of this forever, no matter how long they’ve been here,” Shrewsberry added. “So how we play and what we do and who we are. No matter if you’re here for four years or four months, you can leave a legacy.”
Penn State’s elder statesmen will get a chance to continue to set that tone this Sunday against Indiana as Big Ten play gets fully underway. A worthwhile goal indeed.
