It has been a long time since Penn State men’s basketball has gone through the reintroduction process.
But Wednesday night will be an introduction as much as anything else, the Nittany Lions entering a new era under head coach Micah Shrewsberry after nearly a decade under now former head coach Patrick Chambers.
All told Penn State not only welcomes a new coaching staff to the Bryce Jordan Center, but nine Nittany Lions to the roster as well, the result is a preverbal smorgasbord of faces to learn.
From a player management standpoint it’s a blessing and a curse for Shrewsberry as he attempts to cobble together a starting five. This team is loaded with college basketball experience, but it has little to no experience playing together. Only Seth Lundy, Myles Dread, Sam Sessoms and John Harrar have seen the court together. The rest are getting to know names, let alone games.
But there are worse things than choices.
“We still have two days of practice,” Shrewsberry said with a smile on Monday. “I just hope we can get five out there, like we’re still tinkering with it. We still play with it. We’ll figure it out. Hopefully it comes to me when I sleep at night. I wake up it’s like ‘you should start those five guys.’ so I haven’t totally settled on it.”
Shrewsberry does know one thing though, the Nittany Lions will start big man John Harrar, especially with incoming transfer Greg Lee out for Wednesday’s opener and beyond with an injury.
“I know John’s gonna start,” Shrewsberry said with a laugh. “You put him in. That’s that’s happening. Right now. That was happening way back in April. John is starting.”
Beyond that it’s really anyone’s guess. Conventional wisdom suggests Dread, Lundy and Sessoms would all make for obvious choices in that five by virtue of having played together. Better to have some cohesion than none at all.
That said, Penn State’s incoming transfer situation is unique as it adds five meaningful transfers with junior or senior eligibility. This group isn’t a band of hopeful underclassmen looking to finally find minutes, it’s a roster packed with guys who have seen a lot of basketball and are looking to see even more in their future. Along with Lee, guard Jalen Pickett in particular stands to be a major piece of the Nittany Lions’ puzzle in 2021 and would make for a prudent member of the starting five.
Of course in many ways it doesn’t really matter who the starting five is to begin with. If Penn State is going to do any amount of winning this season it will come from guys rotating in off the bench. In turn, chemistry across the roster is a bit more important than the starting five.
“We started kind of narrowing down as the weeks have gotten closer,” Shrewsberry said. “The guys that are gonna play for you. I give them long stretches at a time with different different groups because as the game goes on, right it’s really important to have five guys that start the game together, but they’re gonna be mixed together throughout the whole game, so they all need to know how to play together.”
The good news? The season is long and Shrewsberry isn’t short on warm bodies to work with. Even if the starting five doesn’t look the same next week as it does on Wednesday night, it won’t be for a lack of options – and options are rarely a bad thing in a season that will span the next several months.
