Micah Shrewsberry describes how he grew as a head coach during time at Penn State

New Notre Dame head basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry has some big shoes to fill, as he’s become the first coach not named Mike Brey to coach the Fighting Irish since the 1999-2000 season. Shrewsberry has spent the last two seasons at Penn State, and on College Hoops Today with Jon Rothstein, he shared what he learned from his experience in Happy Valley.

“I think the experiences, right now when you’re a new coach that’s taking over a new situation, whether they were winning or losing, you’re going to have to deal with some kind of roster turnover,” Shrewsberry said. “Walking into Penn State where we had that before I got there, there was a lot of change, there was a lot of turnover.”

Shrewsberry isn’t wrong, as Notre Dame already this offseason has had five players transfer out of the program and three transfer in. But this isn’t Shrewsberry’s first rodeo, as he took over Penn State’s program fairly recently in March of 2021.

He was able to significantly increase the Nittany Lions’ win total from year one to year two coaching the program, but could he turn things around even faster at Notre Dame with newfound, familiar experience under his belt?

“It’s helping me deal with that a little bit differently here, how do you kind of attack it in year one but how do you also build for the future? I thought we did that in a pretty good way and that is kind of guiding my steps right now,” Shrewsberry explained.

Shrewsberry also added that he’s learned from coaching in the competitive Big Ten Conference, squaring off against some of the best basketball coaches and minds the country has to offer on a night-in and night-out basis.

“The other thing is just the experiences of going against the other coaches in the Big Ten. The Big Ten is a basketball league and you’re learning and every single night right,” Shrewsberry said. “I wasn’t always perfect, I made mistakes, but just learning through those mistakes and now the things that we can go back and lean on of how we become the best program that we can be at Notre Dame is how I can be the best coach that I can be for our guys is all things that I learned in these two years here at Penn State.”

Hopefully, Shrewsberry’s lessons learned can help the Fighting Irish, as they’ll be looking to take a step forward following their disappointing 11-21 finish last season.