BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 10, 2022

Micah Shrewsberry

Myles Dread

Sam Sessoms

Gainbridge Fieldhouse

Penn State Nittany Lions

Postgame Press Conference

Penn State - 71, Ohio State - 68

MODERATOR: We will start with an opening statement from Coach, then we'll take questions from the students, then we'll come back to Coach for questions with him.

Coach, if you want to start off with an opening comment about the win tonight. Congratulations.

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: First off, hats off to Ohio State. They were like -- they're a little banged up in terms of who they have available, who's playing, different guys are in and out. They've gotten in a little bit of a rut because of that.

Still a really good team. E.J. Liddell's a really good player, one of the best players in the country. Malaki Branham is tough. Not like tough for a freshman, he's tough for a player. Those guys caused so many problems.

But I'm proud of these guys. I'm proud of the guys in our locker room. I'm so happy for them because we get to play again tomorrow, and we've been through a lot this year. We've had a lot of close losses and now we're doing what we need to do to flip those losses to wins. All those close losses just made us battle-tested. We're starting to find the right rhythm right now at the right time.

Q. Myles, with about seven minutes left you poke the ball away from E.J. Liddell and then got out on Branham and defended him and hit the transition three. How big are those sort of moments to get the energy up in a game like this?

MYLES DREAD: Still in the stop more than the three. We had a huge focus on defending without fouling and just playing aggressive and being more physical in the second half. The three, I mean, I just kind of did what I've done a thousand times and, you know, I worked really hard on my shot and made it. But I think the spark really came from the defensive end, for sure.

Q. Sam, this game reminded me of the game against Wisconsin; you guys came all the way back, lost by one to come up short. This year you guys come back again and get the job done. How's it feel to win this game and beat Ohio State after losing to them the first two times this season?

SAM SESSOMS: It feels great. I said it yesterday, I love playing with this group of guys. I wanted to get one opportunity. We made it to the second day last year, lost on a last second decision made by me, so I'm just happy to make it to Friday along with this group of guys because we really deserve it. Coaching staff put in a lot of time and effort making sure we know everything and we just try to execute. So I'm just happy for everybody on the team.

Q. For both of you guys, the second half you scored 47 points, I think you had baskets on 22 of 30 possessions. What were you are able to do putting Ohio State in some of those ball screen situations that enabled you to be so much more effective than in the first half?

MYLES DREAD: I mean, we worked on our spacing a lot. All season we worked on being in the ball screen and having the right spacing and creating separation and playing on opposite planes and all kinds of different things. It was really beautiful to see it come to fruition in the second half today.

SAM SESSOMS: Honestly, like he said, our staff does a great job putting together clips how to attack. Regarding our staff, Coach Tre, all he does is put together clips for all the players and he tells us before the game how to attack. So I kind of knew we were going to have to get off two separate planes.

Coach Shrewsberry does a great job. We do ball screen stuff every day. Me and Pickett has the ball in our hands a lot. But honestly, watching film with Coach Tre and listening to him, it just comes down to applying it in the game and making the right decision and that's what we did.

Q. Sam, yesterday it was Jalen, today was you sort of carrying the load. You mentioned how much you guys have the ball in your hands. How have difficult is it in games like this where it really grinds you down to keep that energy up late then?

SAM SESSOMS: It's not hard at all. It's kind of like me and Pickett just alternate if he has it going. I don't even want the ball. I'd rather just give it to him. and it was the same thing today. Me and him talked, at times he felt like he had mismatched in the post and I came to him during the timeout and I was just telling him, like, hey, bro, I know I could get to the spot again to make my layups. And he just said, all right, well, do you and just make the right decision. You know, so it's not that hard. Even at times where it feels like we're carrying a load, some of them guys out there on the floor got so much force, makes it a lot easier.

Q. You guys have struggled so much this year on the road. Now you guys have won two games away from the BJC (Bryce Jordan Center). Does it feel any different now than perhaps they do at the regular season, road games, do you feel like?

SAM SESSOMS: Yeah, it feels a little different. You miss a shot, it's like, dang, because this is the last game. So I really feel like that's the only difference.

Just us coming together out there these last two games, we were trailing, but it's like we were fighting back. In a way it's similar to on the road because it's just us out there. Just like when we go play Minnesota on the road, Northwestern on the road, we don't have any fans in the house, so in ways it's different and in other ways it's very similar.

Q. Question for both you guys. Can you just talk about the momentum you guys built last night from the come-from-behind win against Minnesota and you picked it up against tonight against Ohio State? What was the biggest difference in both games?

MYLES DREAD: Coach tells us all the time the way we fight, the effort we bring every night, like we don't want to go home. That's the main thing. Today, I mean, playing in the Big Ten Tournament, just don't want to go home. You have to have that chip on your shoulder to just go out and fight as hard as you can for as long as you can. It's 40 minutes of basketball. You've got to be prepared to play all 40 minutes as hard as you can.

Q. Guys, what do you kind of take away from that Purdue game back in January? It was obviously a close one and you'll get another shot at them now. I know it's pretty soon after this game, but what do you kind of remember from that game and kind of moving forward, how are you guys going into it?

SAM SESSOMS: The main thing is it was a close game. It came down to the last few possessions, so it's a bright spot. Even though we lost, we know if one or two possessions goes our way we can win and that's all I'm really looking forward to. I know all we did was really run our offense, we got what we want, we did what the coaches made us practice and we executed. First time we played them we lost by a possession or two. I'm not sure, but we were capable of winning that game. I'm -- it's positive, in my opinion.

Q. For the second night in a row you guys shot 60 percent or better in the second half. What has changed at halftime in this game compared to last game?

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: I think we just -- we kind of get a better feel as we go on, as the game goes on. Like there were a couple adjustments that we talked about, but not much. I talked more about our defense out there, not our offense. These guys are the ones playing, so they have the freedom to kind of talk about what they see, how we can attack better. I didn't think our physicality was very good offensively in the first half. I talked about E.J. Liddell and Joey Brunk wanted the ball in the post. They caught it with one or two feet in the paint, right? First play of the game, Pickett drives the post and gets pushed all the way out to the 3-point line. There's the difference right there. In the second half now he's backing guys down. He's two feet in the paint, they have to decide if they want to help or not. But our physicality changed and then our offense changes. I talked about this guy yesterday, the guy I used to work for, Brad. He always says the toughest teams set the rules and I felt like we were the tougher team in the second half.

Q. Coach, Myles Dread had a great all-around game offensively and defensively and he was bringing a lot of energy for the comeback. What did you see from him tonight?

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: I think just taking on the challenge of guarding E.J. Liddell. Pickett picked up a couple fouls, Seth picked up three fouls. They played a long time with that, but we kind of switched up our matchups in terms of what we wanted to do. Like he's a hard cover, man. He can -- he can score in the post, he can step out and drive, he can make threes, so you have to have some guys with some versatility who can guard him. I thought Myles just did a pretty good job of just being physical, trying to push his catches out further, trying to deny as much as possible and then make it as tough as possible. He still scored a boatload of points. We fouled him way too much, got him to the free-throw line where he was getting in ones or got him into the bonus, like the 10-minute mark. We need to do a better job than that. That's one of our keys going in, not sending him to the free-throw line as much. I thought his will defensively really kind of spurred us on offensively. One of the things we knew is E.J. helps a lot, right? He's great, he's a great shot blocker, but sometimes he veers too far off his man and Myles got a big three because he was in the paint like that. Then the next time they helped, he made an extra pass to Seth for a three. And those were huge plays for us to keep our offense going.

Q. Micah, with about a minute 30 left, John pulled down that rebound with I think four or five Ohio State defenders around him. How far did that go in sort of closing out the game?

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: You know, he makes plays like that every single game for us. That's who he is. Unbelievable for a guy to play like how he plays, get ready to play all day today and then come out and play, you know, 31 minutes, 31 minutes as hard as he plays on both ends. They're going at him in the post with Joey Brunk and he's fighting down there, then he's sprinting to the other end of the court, now he's sprinting back up and setting ball screens and rolling to the rim as hard as possible, going for the offensive rebound and then sprinting back on defense. And then late in the game they go small and now he's got to guard E.J. Liddell and just his communication, he denied him one time and tried to push him further out on the court. Like you can't talk -- you can't say enough things about that kid. There's a lot of things that you can say, how great of a player he is, how great of a person he is, but unbelievable will and fight. He's one of the toughest dudes I've ever been around.

Q. This was your most efficient offensive game of the season against a Big Ten team and you only had 24 points at halftime. When the second half is going the way that it went for you tonight, what does that feel like?

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: We've had games where we've really struggled, but these guys just kind of found different ways to get to their strengths and we were just trying to play to our strengths. We felt like Pickett had an advantage posting guys, so we tried to go to that. We thought trying to attack and pick and rolls a little bit, trying to get them into switches and now bringing another guy in, making him decide who do they want to switch it, do they not want to switch it, right? We do a lot of different things. That's one thing that's probably -- like if you watch us play, there was a couple things we do each game, but you're probably looking at it like, and they do one thing like one time, then they'll do something one time, then they'll do something else one time. It's hard to prepare for everything when there's so much randomness to how we play. So our guys just found, like Sam was saying, the advantage that they liked, that they wanted and we just tried to attack in that way.

Q. Micah, along those lines, you guys had a 32-14 edge points in the paint. To have your guards be able to do so much of that damage, how much of a luxury is that kind of in this day and age? The two guards had two 3-pointers between them but ended up with 34 points.

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: Yeah, that's just a by-product -- those guys, they do a great job of knowing what we want to do, how we want to attack and then finding different ways based on how people play pick and roll defense. We see something and we can execute it and we can do it. They did a good job of getting into the paint, kind of keeping the guard on their back and now John's rolling and you make that big, make really tough decision whether he stays and stops them or whether he goes back to take John and that gets him into the paint. Like we talk about paint touches all the time. It's one of those stats that we talk about at halftime that we put on the board, like how many paint touches did we have in the possession, how many did the other team have. For the most part, if you continue to get in the paint, get in the paint, get in the paint, we were scoring at the rim which now forced them to help a couple times late which got us those open threes.

Q. You talked in your opening statement about the close losses this season being, you know, learning experiences. How have you made sure that your guys have interpreted them that way rather than reasons to be discouraged? Because that seems like it's something that could kind of go either way.

COACH MICAH SHREWSBERRY: Yeah, it can. We've got an older group of guys that have kind of been through the wars a little bit. Now, they haven't done it together, they haven't all done it here, but they've brought each of their own separate experiences and that's what we kind of lean on as much as possible. We go back and we watch film and we try and learn the best way we can, but you just -- you ask these guys to just do their best, right? We can't do more than our best, and we've given our best on a lot of occasions, so you can be okay with the results of what happens. I've talked about this before. We didn't give our best against Nebraska at home, so that loss really hurts, really hurts. So we didn't give our best, but we've given our best more times than not, and when you lose, you know how much you gave and that's kind of what being good's about.

You've got to be vulnerable a little bit to be good. Like it takes these guys -- there's a lot of vulnerability for these guys to go out there every single night and just put themselves out there in front of people, trying as hard as possible, knowing that you can still lose. It's easy to just quit and be like, I don't want to put myself all the way out there and do everything I can because now I have a built-in excuse, right? We get beat. Yeah, I know, but I wasn't really trying. These guys are putting themselves out there and trying as hard as possible and still getting beat and that's some vulnerability to it, but that makes you good at the end of the day. That makes you better at the end of the day. They're open to criticism, they're open to change and we're just learning day by day. I'm just so proud of them for fighting through every single time we get down. It's just building character. Basketball's teaching life lessons and these guys are learning life lessons right now because live's not always fair and there's going to be obstacles that happen and we're playing a kid's game, but we're learning life lessons through it.

MODERATOR: Great. Thank you very much, we'll see you tomorrow.