The Penn State men’s basketball team lost another heartbreaker on Tuesday night, this time to the Michigan Wolverines at home in the Bryce Jordan Center. Days after dropping a hard-fought battle on the road against the favored Wisconsin Badgers in Madison, Penn State came up just one point shy against Juwan Howard’s Wolverines, losing 58-57 in the Big Ten contest.
Michigan used an 11-0 run to close out the first half to send the game into halftime tied at 34-34, and the second half of the game turned into a defensive battle with Penn State’s shooting struggling after the break. After the game, Penn State head coach Micah Shrewsberry reflected on what went wrong for his squad after halftime, and he put the blame on his shoulders for how his team handled the intensity and adversity.
Shrewsberry looked in the mirror and suggested he had to be a better leader, which led to the first-year head coach sharing the promise he made to his team after the competitive loss on their home court.
“I told our guys in the locker room, I apologized to them. I have to be better,” Shrewsberry said. “I got to keep my composure. I got to coach these guys and I didn’t help them tonight. They kind of took my lead and played a little bit more frazzled than they needed to. I got to be better for them, and I will be.”
Shrewsberry suggested he got a bit caught up in the emotion of the game, with reactions to calls and non-calls he felt hurt his team and players distracting from coaching in the moment to make some changes or plays that could have swung the game the other way, especially after halftime.
“I promise I will be for those guys because the way that they’re fighting and what they’re doing, they deserve that,” Shrewsberry said. “I’m going to fight for these dudes. Nobody else is going to fight for my team. I’m going to fight for them every single day of the week.”
The past couple of weeks have been good learning opportunities for Shrewsberry and his program. Penn State has responded well with the competitive fire in the last three games after back-to-back blowout losses on the road against Iowa and Indiana. A double-overtime win over Iowa at home and back-to-back close losses to Wisconsin and Michigan have shown Penn State knows how to compete in the Big Ten, but it still has to show up in the win column a bit more if any postseason dreams are to be realized.
Next up for Penn State is another road trip. Penn State visits Minnesota this Saturday night.
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