Penn State Men’s Basketball: Nittany Lions Shooting Record Clip from Deep; Question Will Be if They Can Keep It Up

It is very early in the season, that much should be said off the top. Penn State men’s basketball has played just six games, hardly enough to really get to know a group, but just long enough to start to see some trends.

For anyone who follows the program closely, the idea that the Nittany Lions entered the season with questions regarding their interior play was not a shock. A host of young faces are set to replace longtime physical big man John Harrar, who followed in the footsteps of the ultra-talented and athletic Mike Watkins. There is plenty of hope this group can form into something meaningful down the road, but interior scoring and interior play was never going to be Penn State’s calling card in 2022.

For Penn State coach Micah Shrewsberry it poses a question, one he clearly has answered. Does Penn State try to become a traditionally balanced team, scoring from both in the paint and beyond the three point arc? Or does it simply lean into a deep rotation of shooters and let the threes fly. Sure, maybe it is ever so slightly imbalanced, maybe it is ever so slightly a calculated risk. But if you’re good at something, go be good at it. No sense in wasting possessions for the sake of doing things the way “they should be done.”

“I leaned into that a long time ago [for] this year. Just knowing who we were gonna be,” Shrewsberry said this week. “I think [Evan Mahaffey and Kebba Njie] are going to be really good players for us, but they’re also freshmen and and they’re gonna have learning experiences right? Caleb [Dorsey] never been a back to the basket post scorer, that’s not who he is. Mikey [Henn] is more of a face up guy so you have to figure out a way to get those points in the paint in different way.”

In their defense, Penn State’s interior group might very well find itself by season’s end. Mahaffey and Njie have both had very solid moments in their young careers, but both are raw. There’s no doubt what they could become, or that they could start to find that sort of play this season, but right now they aren’t the ones to carry Penn State to victory.

And so enters the three-point shooting. So far this season Penn State has attempt 177 shots from beyond the arc and has made 75 of them. It’s a rate of 29.5 per game that is 15th in all of Division I basketball right now. On top of that the Nittany Lions average 12.5 makes per game, third most nationwide. In fact so far this season Penn State has made double-digit totals from beyond the arc in all but one game. Six games might not be a big sample size, but it’s not nothing either.

“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,” Shrewsberry added. “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.”

What has been impressive so far is the degree to which Penn State has made, and relied on the three. The Nittany Lions are currently on pace to make a program record 400 threes on 767 attempts while shooting what would also be a program record clip of 42.3% from beyond the arc. The season will almost certainly see that trajectory go up and down, but it’s clear that the Nittany Lions aren’t afraid of who they are. In fact so far this season 51% of all shots taken from the field have come from beyond the arc. As for the program’s accuracy record? That came in 1983 when Penn State shot 41.5% from deep, but on 171 attempts, six fewer than Penn State has already attempted this season.

Of course as Penn State has found out early in the year — and as has long been true for basketball teams in general — you live and die by the three. And that’s where defense comes in. So far through six games, Penn State has given up an average of just 63.3 points per game while averaging 75.2 points per game in favor of the Nittany Lions. It’s a good recipe, but only if the defense is there when the shots don’t fall.

“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.”

So yes, prepare for the three and on the nights it falls the Nittany Lions will be tough to beat.