‘Nothing within my journey has been sexy’: Micah Shrewsberry arrives at Penn State with underdog attitude - PennLive

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STATE COLLEGE — Micah Shrewsberry stood on a practice court in a socially distanced Bryce Jordan Center and admitted that his journey to this current moment, one where he was introduced as the new Penn State men’s basketball coach, hadn’t always been easy. It hadn’t always been smooth.

He played Division III college basketball. His first head coaching job was in the NAIA. He didn’t have a job for a spell in the early 2000s.

“I wish I could say it’s been all rosy but, you know, everybody’s gonna have ups and downs and everybody’s gonna have bad days,” Shrewsberry said in his opening remarks over Zoom on Tuesday.

In a cutthroat Big Ten basketball league, Penn State has toggled between afterthought and underdog. The program has attempted to claw its way out of the basement, and while there have been glimpses of success — the last NCAA Tournament appearance in 2011, an NIT run in 2018, the 2020 season before the coronavirus pandemic — nothing has been sustained.

In the 44-year-old Shrewsberry, though, Penn State hopes it has found the coach to finally pull the Lions program out of the doldrums. Shrewsberry has coached for winners under Brad Stevens at Butler and with the Celtics and under Matt Painter at Purdue, but he still fashions himself as an underdog. It mirrors his program. It could be a match.

“We’re going to keep that underdog mentality,” Shrewsberry said Tuesday. “We’re going to keep that chip on our shoulder mentality, and I think you succeed in that way. And for me, I’ve kind of been that way my whole life, and I want the team that models after that.”

Shrewsberry played college hoops at Hanover, a Division III college in Indiana before spending time on staff at Wabash and DePauw. Despite growing up, playing and coaching in basketball-crazed Indiana, Shrewsberry still had to forge his own way. Shrewsberry didn’t come from a Division I school with deep connections throughout the sport. He wasn’t a known name from a high-profile playing career, either.

He had to find those on his own, and it kept him in basketball backwaters for a while.

“I had to grind it, as the kids like to say, through the mud,” Shrewsberry said. “That’s how I got it”

After his time at DePauw ended, Shrewsberry said he couldn’t find a job. All he heard back on his applications was “no.” At the time, Shrewsberry was unemployed and engaged.

“I got married and I didn’t even have a job,” Shrewsberry said. “Like, talk about sticking with somebody through everything. And I was kind of living in a bedroom at her parents’ house and look at me now. Molly, I guess she saw something in me.”

When Shrewsberry got his first head coaching job, it was at IU South Bend, an NAIA school in a city much more known for a different university. Shrewsberry said he sometimes did the team’s laundry or drove the team’s van to games. He had to make his chances happen, and soon enough, he connected with Stevens at Butler and Painter at Purdue.

Shrewsberry had finally broken through, and he remained there.

Shrewsberry is hoping to accomplish something similar with Penn State. The Lions went 11-14 under interim coach Jim Ferry — who took over when Patrick Chambers stepped down in October following an investigation into his conduct — in 2020-21, but Shrewsberry complimented how the Lions played. He wants them to keep that same edge when it comes time to play for him.

One of Shrewsberry’s first tasks as the Lions coach was re-recruiting six players out of the transfer portal. Izaiah Brockington will return. Jamari Wheeler and Myreon Jones won’t. John Harrar, Seth Lundy and Trent Buttrick remain in the transfer portal.

Shrewsberry hopes his new players will identify with him. His journey is similar to the ones some of the players took to get to Penn State, and he could be similar to Penn State overall. That’s the initial selling point for Shrewsberry.

The hope it that the success follows, like it has at his previous stops.

“Nothing within my journey has been sexy,” Shrewsberry said.

“That’s the journey I talked about, that’s the ups and downs, that’s the grind, but that’s who I want to be. That’s who I want my program to be like. Nothing comes easy to us. Like, we don’t want anything, we don’t expect anything. We’re going to work for everything, and that’s who we want to be. That’s who I am.”

Daniel Gallen covers Penn State for PennLive. He can be reached at dgallen@pennlive.com. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Follow PennLive’s Penn State coverage on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.