Penn State is soon to be 20 games deep into its season with a 9:00 p.m. tip against Michigan on the docket for Tuesday night. That’s a lot of basketball, and in a perfect world the Nittany Lions would have played four more games already this season if not for COVID-19.
Playing a lot – Penn State has averaged one game every 4.5 days since the season opener, a figure boosted by three-straight canceled games – means there isn’t a lot of time to get better. There is travel, recovery, workouts, film, classes and yes practice, but as the seasons goes along the priority is more and more on health and recovery. Practices are shortened, time spent actually playing basketball dwindles in favor of fresh legs.
So how does a team get better? Are players actually getting better at basketball or does team improvement comes from simply practicing the little things and minimizing mistakes? There’s value in limiting miscues, basketball is an execution game as much as anything else.
“I think a little bit of both,” Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry said earlier this week. “Like as much as you can focus on guys individually, that’s what you want to do. As we shorten practice, we do a little more breakdown stuff where they can kind of key in on certain areas but key on areas that make them better. I feel like if we’re doing individual workout stuff throughout the season your guys are getting better. If your players are getting better individually, your team is getting better, so I think you see a little bit more detail.”
“They better understand what you’re trying to do how to attack people […] so the main thing now is guys are banged up. Everybody in America is banged up because you may have these short breaks or you may have quick turnaround games. So you have to manage that in terms of keeping guys healthy and keeping them fresh and getting them to the games as well as continuing to make them better as individual players.”
It’s an interesting conversation regarding the idea of what you make a player better at. Penn State junior Seth Lundy has played a lot of basketball in his career and has now turned into a great defender and much better finisher at the rim, those sorts of changes don’t happen by mistake.
At the same time coaches have to be careful not to reinvent the wheel.
“If you’re here for four years or you’re here for one year, whatever it may be, I gave these guys a promise I’m gonna help them become better players,” Shrewsberry said. “Coach Farrelly he’s done a good job with Seth, how to attack holes out in the right way. And then when you attack it, what’s the next the next play from there? I think he’s constantly growing in that area. But we spend a good amount of time doing it, and the more reps you get, the better you get to keep going.”
And any advice from the elder statesman John Harrar? Don’t stop asking questions.
“You can’t keep doing losing things like turning the ball over, just can’t keep beating yourself,” Harrar said. “And I do think you get better. I think you see it by people that want to get better, like people that ask questions and people that are in the gym every day. Those are the people that get better.”
