With news breaking of Micah Shrewsberry’s departure to Notre Dame, who will roam the sidelines of the Bryce Jordan Center for the Penn State Basketball next year?
Just two years removed from hiring Shrewsberry, the Nittany Lions will need to filla head coaching vacancy.
3 Best Options for Penn State Basketball to Replace Micah Shrewsberry
Talor Battle
Battle is the program’s all-time leading scorer and served on the Nittany Lions staff before taking a job at Northwestern where he could coach his step-brother.
Now that Boo Buie is graduating, would he consider returning home?
Battle has no head coaching experience, but then again neither did Micah Shrewsberry. It’s probably unlikely but whoever gets the job should reach out to Talor with an assistant coaching position.
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Dan Earl
Earl played for Penn State Basketball in the mid-90’s, helping Penn State reach their all-time high in the AP Poll (No. 9, tied by the 2019-2020 team).
Unlike Battle, he has a wealth of coaching experience on his resume. He was an assistant at Penn State before moving to Navy with Ed DeChellis. As a head coach at VMI, he took the the Keydets to the postseason in 2021 before accepting the Chattanooga job this past year.
Adam Fisher
An alum, Fisher has previous coaching experience at Penn State and Boston before moving to Miami. Despite no head coaching experience, could Fisher keep the high rated recruits (Carey Booth) and freshmen (Kebba Njie, Evan Mahffey, etc.) in the blue and white? Or will Micah try to take him to Notre Dame with him?
Keith Urgo
This is a typical name for a Penn State Basketball hire, a man with ties to the program and who had success at the mid-major level. Urgo was the A-10 Coach of the Year this year, admittedly in just his first year on the job. The main reason he probably won’t be considered too highly is his ties with Pat Chambers, who was fired prior to the 2021 season.
Pat Chamb — ok, just kidding.
But, he did successfully recruit Philadelphia basketball players to Happy Valley. And the AD who fired him isn’t here anymore…
Matt Langel
The current head coach of the Colgate Red Raiders, Langel is a Pennsylvania native having played for UPenn and coached for former Temple great Fran Dunphy. He has been the head coach at Colgate for the last 11 seasons and is a four-time Patriot League Coach of the Year. His name has been floated for a variety of higher-profile jobs so maybe a return to the commonwealth is in the cards.
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NittanyCentral is his second reporting job following the Men's Basketball program. He co-founded and co-hosts the Shots Gotta Fall - The Penn State Basketball Podcast (the premiere, the best, the only) with Steve Travis.
Smith's most proud moment covering the team was seeing the national No. 9 ranking during Pat Chambers' last year. His most embarrassing moment was spending almost a thousand dollars to travel 2,000 miles in 46 hours to watch the Nittany Lions lose to Temple in the 2011 NCAA Tournament (screw you Juan Fernandez).
