NittanyNation - PSU 365: Instant Reaction to Shrewsberry leaving, potential replacements
The guys react to Micah Shrewsberry leaving Penn State for Notre Dame and talk potential replacements.
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Basketball **PODCAST: Instant Reaction to Shrewsberry leaving, potential replacements**
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
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That would be beyond pathetic. It’s time that they think big, and we all know money talks so where there’s a will there’s a way.
That guy needs to prove he can win at a lower level. Shrewsberry was a different case having been attached to Stevens for so long, including going to the national championship games, and being in the NBA. Fisher is nowhere near any of that.
Let's face facts, there will be no big hire. They aren't coming somewhere like PSU. If they hire someone with no local recruiting ties, it will be another dud. Shrews just showed us PSU is not a destination job. If Fisher is a legit Canidate for the Temple job then he should be one here too(notice I said "IF"). Temple has had as much BB success or more than us. Hope I'm surprised by the hire but I have a feeling we will all be underwhelmed.
Would be huge to get him but Texas would be stupid to let him go. PLus they have way more $$ to throw at him
I’d honestly pass…no ties to our natural recruiting areas, and didn’t have all that much success in the past building his own program.
yep...this is why "programs" are so important. It is so hard to move up the food chain in major college sports like football and basketball.
Shrews left because we lack the ability, compared to ND, to move the needle. We don't have a tradition, reputation, or facilities. Top-rated kids simply do not want to come here as compared to even Villanova and St. Johns.
This is what our football program does to lesser programs as well.
Shrews isn't dumb. He knows improving ND gets him a ticket to the real powers in college basketball. He used PSU to move up to the second tier, choosing between ND and Georgetown. If successful, you'll see him coaching at Michigan, Michigan State, tOSU, Sparty, Purdue, UT, Kansas, MD, NC, Duke or one of the other major powers next.
PSU is in chicken and egg territory. If we want to move up, we are going to have to dedicate $100m plus to upgrading facilities, coaching salaries, grooming NIL, and marketing. If not, well, "We Are! what we are."
this is an absurd number. Shrewsberry has literally just proven that it's not as hard to win here as the previous numbskulls made it seem
LOL.....Now go back 40 years.
At this point, Shrews, to his credit, caught lightning in a bottle with Pickett. He sees he's got a lot better opportunity to do that at ND than PSU. And, of course, that is the point.
go back 40 years, and other than Parkhill and Shrewsberry PSU was wasting everyone's time.
He did it in two seasons, after a strange transition away from the prior regime. He is not the only coach in the USA who is capable of doing this.
make the worst hires possible for 25 years in a row and you make it look really hard
The playing field around men's college basketball has changed. And it is still evolving. The Blue Bloods are still blue, but don't appear to be as dominant.
Coaching changes/retirements, NIL and the transfer portal have made team building more of an annual event for every team, than ever before.
You can be the best coach in the world. If you can't get the quality of player necessary to compete and play within the constraints of what is best for the team, you'll never be successful.
When the team was playing well at the end of the year, it was a direct reflection of the coaching of Shrew.
With Pat, I sometimes felt that the in game success of the team was in spite of, or inconsequential of him, instead of because of him.
I think you are pretty pollyanna here. PSU is not a basketball school and has never been one. Shrews got a kid that turned out to be an all-american. Credit the him for bringing in Pickett and developing a unique "one playmaker, four sharpshooters" offense. But that isn't a sustainable model. UT figured it out, put your best athlete on Pickett and guard the perimeter. Not rocket science, you just have to have the horseses.
So if you are happy with making a playoff once every 20 years that is our program. If you want to sustain you are going to have to make major investments. Shrews didn't sign up for another seven years of trying to convince a teen-ager to strap crappy facilities and no program on his back and leave a legacy. They want a path to the NBA, not a plaque in PSU's sports hall of fame.
Yep...and that makes the program and infrastructure even more important. It works for us in football (107k, white outs, tons of kids making jack in the NFL) and works against us in football. You can't build that overnight.
I wouldn't go that far. It's a different world today than before. He won with one of the oldest if not oldest team in CB. There was over 8000 career points on that team. He had Jalen Pickett! Transfers aren't always going to mesh the way these did. Unfortunately we'll never know how Year 3 would have gone.
it took him 2 seasons. and as everyone likes to point out Pat was going to the tournament in 2019-20 prior to covid. So we were basically in the tournament twice in four years. With two coaching changes in between. There was never any reason for the program to be going 10+ years between appearances, they simply did a terrible job of hiring
Ok...if we are going to make stuff up I am out of the conversation.
I will say that being in the B1G works against us. it is much harder for us to make the "dance" than Cleveland State or Howard.
what is made up, all the Chambers defenders on this site basically insist on telling us that he was going to the tournament in 2020, which is true btw
the main problem that held this program back in the Big Ten era was the 2003 hire. It took the program down to something below a mid-major for a while, and set the program back by about 10 years
yes he did and some investments may be needed. But it does not require $100 million to do it again. we literally just did it from scratch in 2 years with an underpaid coach
well, the next thing that will hold us back is not being able to retain a good coach that we finally have.
Again, 40 years of history needs to be recognized. Getting lucky with a coach and a key player is not a sustainable model.
Not overnight. But, IMO, with the right head coach, can be done much more quickly.
I'm curious how much of the additional revenues from the new BIG deal get appropriated to football and men's basketball. Equity in generation of revenue???
I don't think it was getting lucky. It was making a decent basketball hire, which was not something we saw since Parkhill.
Hire coaches who belong at the Big Ten level. it's that simple.
Dunn? yes, but as an assistant
DeChellis? not even close
Chambers? probably not
Shrewsberry? yes
And the more I read, there was some stuff in Shrewsberry's bio that made this kind of move pretty predictable. Geographic and family stuff. So they need to do a better job on thinking about that the next time
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yeah...and then losing him because he knows he has a better opportunity to sustain a program at ND than PSU....and that is the point. PSU can't just go and hope we with the coach lottery again. We need to make the program attractive and right now, it isn't attractive. Our program has, historically sucked. The facilities are not up to par. We don't get TV eyes or attendance.
Now, we are back to square one because put the cart before the horse. If we don't invest in the infrastructure, the program, we can just hire a new coach, hope he's good, have a good season, and then wave goodbye to him after that good season.
There are a lot more shades of gray than your "Jerry/Ed/Pat were complete idiots, and Micah is a genius" take.
Jerry obviously had some periods of success, had a big sweet 16 run, etc. But in the end, lost any momentum that he had, wasn't loved by many of his players, and we had to move on.
Ed inherited a horrible situation, and left things in a better place than when he arrived. He had a few times where we just about got over the hump (someone like Trey Burke ends up in a PSU jersey, we win one more game in 2009 and it's 2 NCAAs in 3 seasons, etc).
Pat did a lot to open up the Philly area for us when some of the hurdles of getting there were lowered...again, he had the talent to make 2 NCAAs in his final 3 seasons, plus 2021 could have turned out much differently had he been on the sideline. He again got us close to where we needed to be.
Micah had an up and down couple of years, but really struck gold in the transfer portal and brought in some high school guys there were very well regarded. However, we drop one of those coin flips over the past month and head to the NIT, and the conversations here are suddenly how much longer should he get instead of "Kraft is an idiot for not giving him 5 million/year".
that is the natural gut reaction, but i was Reading up on stuff about his family background. apparently his father is some type of politician in Indiana and connected to the Notre Dame AD? ok, it is predictable you are losing that guy if ND comes open. so move on.
take the buyout cash and throw away the PSU-only Rolodex of coaching candidates. this is not really that hard unless PSU gets in its own way, which they might. It is a lot easier than succeeding in football, which they have been able to figure out
Micah did do it through the transfer portal but it's not like the transfer portal closes when he leaves. it is still there for the next guy
and we will need to use it because the recruiting class is probably 100% gone
I think you missed his point about the portal. The further we get away from the extra year the less likely someone can pull off what he did. You wont be getting 5th or 6th year seniors there much longer
Excuses.
he left for a better opportunity. Hell, PSU would let him use the corporate jet if he needed to get back to Indiana He left because the program is deficient.
that's not an excuse it is just a plain view of the situation.
PSU also offered him money up to a point that it was time to end the negotiation. You cant pay the guy more than Tom Izzo based on one three-week run.
