Penn State basketball preview: Micah Shrewsberry looking for a response against St. Francis Brooklyn

A sleepless Micah Shrewsberry knew the timestamp of the play he needed to reference from Penn State’s loss to UMass on Monday off the top of his head.

At 17:26 in the second half, UMass guard Noah Fernandes loses the ball as he drives into the lane. He dives on it. The Nittany Lions stand around and watch. Fernandes recovers, and gets it to Trent Buttrick who gets fouled and hits two free throws.

It’s a play Shrewsberry and the Penn State coaching staff discussed with the team in a Tuesday film session. There was plenty to correct following an 81-56 demolition job at the hands of the Minutemen. But Shrewsberry had one aspect of the game he really wanted to dive into.

“Today in film, we’ll talk a lot about our effort,” Shrewsberry said Tuesday. “One of our four keys to the game is dominating effort. And [UMass] did that.”

Monday’s loss offered some initial insight into how Shrewsberry handles defeats — with his team in the locker room and publicly as well.

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He doesn’t yell and scream, he said. Not immediately after the game, anyway, because he doesn’t yet have the full picture in his mind.

“I try and stay as balanced as I can in those locker room moments because you haven’t seen it,” he said. “There’s things in your mind that you think happened. There’s things that you remember and you see. But when you go back and watch film, it really clears everything up for you.

“I try and stay as calm and poised as possible in the locker room after the game, because it doesn’t do you any good to get upset and spout off at something and then you go back and look at it and you’re wrong. I want to be right.”

The Nittany Lions didn’t need to wait long for a chance to respond.

St. Francis Brooklyn comes to the Bryce Jordan Center on Thursday night for a 7 p.m. tip on BTN+. Penn State is a 23-point favorite according to Vegas Insider as of Thursday morning.

The Terriers are off to an 0-2 start this season, with losses to Wisconsin and St. Thomas (MN) on their ledger.

“You can’t turn one loss into two,” Shrewsberry said. “I can’t go in there and crush these guys in film. We need to learn from the film.

“There’s a lot we need to get better from. They are fixable mistakes. I can’t make anybody taller. I can’t make anybody stronger. Those are things that you can’t control, but we can control things for us to get better.”

Shrewsberry said he mainly hopes to see some improvement on the defensive end of the floor.

The Nittany Lions found themselves a step behind the play against UMass, Shrewsberry said. They rotated poorly. They played bad help defense.

All of those ingredients combined into an 81-point showing for the Minutemen, who shot 48 percent from the field and made 13 threes.

The St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers have averaged 40.6 percent from the field during their first two games. They’ve also attempted 26.5 3-pointers per contest, something the Nittany Lions will have to be wary of.

Guard Michael Cubbage — a transfer from Marist — is their leading scorer, with 30 points split over two games.

Shrewsberry thinks the Nittany Lions will need to be prepared for some tempo come tipoff.

“UMass had played at the quickest pace that we’ve played against so far, and St. Francis will play even faster,” he said. “The transition defense has to be really good. We gotta get back and limit their easy opportunities early in the shot clock, early in possessions, make them grind it out in a possession by possession game.”