Monday Hoops Notebook: OSU recap, Lundy update
Thanks to a snowstorm in State College on Monday, Micah Shrewsberry met with the media via Zoom for his weekly media availability.
There weren’t a ton of pressing updates, but he recapped his team’s loss to Ohio State and a quick update on a missing player, among other things.
Penn State’s next contest is at home Wednesday against Minnesota at 6:30 p.m. The Nittany Lions will also play this week at Iowa at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Here’s some of what Shrewsberry had to say.
Lundy day-to-day
Big news dropped hours before Penn State’s tipoff against the Buckeyes, as leading scorer and top defender Seth Lundy was officially unavailable for the game and did not travel to Columbus.
Per university policy, Shrewsberry is unable to comment on his players’ injury or illness status. He classified Lundy as “day-to-day.”
“We're looking forward to having him back, and hopefully it's soon in terms of when we get him back,” Shrewsberry said.
“I can tell you right now that we could've used him, we could definitely use him. But I'm not at liberty to say right now.
Shrews wants more discipline
Shrewsberry said he was happy with his team’s preparation for the Ohio State game, but he was much less happy with the result the Nittany Lions put on the floor on Sunday.
“I didn't feel like our discipline was where it needed to be offensively and defensively,” Shrewsberry said.
He admitted they missed Lundy’s contributions on both ends of the floor. His absence defensively forced Shrewsberry to switch rotations and even stopped Penn State from playing small ball against E.J. Liddell and the Buckeyes.
However, he’s moving on to the next day. And he said Martin Luther King Jr. Day was “poetic” for his team to get back on track, citing one of his favorite quotes.
“The time is always right to do what is right. That quote has a lot of meanings in a lot of different ways, and we use it as a basketball program as well,” Shrewsberry said. “I spend a lot of my time talking about 'do your job,' and I didn't feel like we did that as a team.
“And we gotta be better [and] our discipline's got to be better for us to win on the road against a really good team.”
Shrewsberry said they’ll have to carry that discipline over, starting with Wednesday’s game against Minnesota on to a number of stout opponents in the conference slate.
Scott’s acclimation
After finally cutting through NCAA eligibility red tape and getting in a position to play, Jevonnie Scott got his first minutes as a Nittany Lion in the win over Rutgers. He played just five minutes and scored two points.
Scott amped it up just a bit with seven minutes against Ohio State, and they were quality minutes. He even was tasked with rotating onto Liddell in a few instances.
Shrewsberry said we haven't seen all of what Scott can do, and he has had to play Scott out of position out of “necessity.”
He said the 6-foot-7 forward is a great passer, can handle the ball and his skillset is a lot broader than what he’s shown so far. Penn State even set a ball screen for him against Ohio State, resulting in an emphatic drive to the basket capped with a dunk.
“He's gonna be able to do more and more things,” Shrewsberry said. “It's just hard when your first game comes in the middle of January when everybody else's first game was in November, so they're comfortable in terms of what they're doing. He'll get better as we go on. He's got time to get better.”
--------------------------------------------------------------
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
• Talk about it inside The Wrestling Room Board