Micah Shrewsberry will bring NBA influence to Purdue's staff

More: Purdue 2019-20 roster | Prospectus

Micah Shrewsberry is known as a well-liked guy in coaching, with a robust network, and often the past half dozen years or so, he's been generous with both his time and expertise when that network has come calling.

No more.

"I'm a guy who's always helped people along the way, so people would call me and I'd give them ideas to try to help them. Now I'm going to be selfish," Shrewsberry joked," and keep all those ideas to myself, for our staff."

That staff is now, once again, Purdue's, and those ideas are in part the knowledge gained during his six seasons as an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics, not to mention his prior experience with Brad Stevens for a pair of national runner-up Butler teams, plus the two seasons he spent at Purdue prior to Boston.

It's that knowledge base Purdue will lean on this season to come as it loses both its foundational offensive presences in Carsen Edwards and Ryan Cline and the assistant coach, Greg Gary, who oversaw the offense. Edwards left for the NBA, Cline graduated and Gary became Mercer's head coach.

Before the NCAA Tournament was even out, Painter more or less had his man in Shrewsberry, a respected former colleague, long-time friend and highly regarded offensive coach.

"He’s really good," Stevens said of Shrewsberry. "And he’s a great communicator. He knows how to get things communicated quickly and succinctly. I thought his transition (to the NBA) was smoother than mine."

Now, Shrewsberry transitions back to college, a move that made sense for him, he said, because of his affinity for college basketball and its sense of community, and the relationships that come with it, but also Painter and the "freedom he gives his assistants to kind of let us really develop and grow in our own way as future head coaches, as he's done for a lot of different guys."

For the first time in his decade-and-a-half or so at Purdue, Painter will have NBA influence on his coaching staff, Cuonzo Martin's playing experience notwithstanding.

Those expanded horizons could work to the program's benefit as it faces another year — as is reality in college basketball, college sports in general — in which it must reinvent itself offensively.

Painter's system has always been motion, the most college-ish of offenses, but it's always been crafted by the strengths of its personnel, with seemingly more set plays called than ever before the past few seasons. Now, NBA concepts and frame of reference comes into the picture, although the NBA and college games are, of course, inherently different and while Shrewsberry can bring Kyrie Irving's or Jayson Tatum's plays with him, he can't bring Kyrie Irving or Jayson Tatum with him, and the latter are obviously more important than the former.

Shrewsberry said there might be some "technical" nuance that comes from his time with the Celtics, but the big picture is the more important picture.

"The biggest thing with coming from the NBA and coming back to college is just that you have to tailor what you do to the guys that you have," Shrewsberry said. "That's not brain surgery. Some people run a system and get set in their ways, but Paint has (adjusted to his personnel) and shown over the years he can mold what he wants to do around the players that he has. Just having different ideas to bring to the table ... is just what I want to do."

Shrewsberry said he's watched as many Purdue games real-time as his schedule would allow during his NBA years, so he has an idea of what he'll be working with, but once he arrives in West Lafayette to stay — he was due to be in town Tuesday, but just temporarily — he'll take a closer look, and solicit input from Painter and eventually, he hopes, Greg Gary.

"It's really going to be a deep dive into what (players') strengths are, where they like (the ball) and what they're really good at and what they're not," he said.

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There's precedent for Shrewsberry making a distinct offensive impact for Purdue from his previous tenure with the Boilermakers in 2011-12 and '12-13, during which he was heavily involved in the offense.

That first season, Purdue had just lost E'Twaun Moore and JaJuan Johnson and returned a team that would be built around Robbie Hummel, back from a repeat knee injury.

This past season for Purdue, one defined by the improbable success the Boilermakers enjoyed despite significant personnel losses from the season prior, drew stark parallels to that season.

It was back then that Purdue also enjoyed a dramatic in-season turnaround to play itself off the Bubble and toward much more, and did so in a distinctly similar manner.

It was then that Purdue, after playing traditionally — with a true center on the floor, for one thing — to begin the season, and with Hummel rounding back into form, started slow.

It was an offensive shift that really made something of that season, propelling Purdue back into the NCAA Tournament and to nearly upsetting top-seeded Kansas in Round 2 in Omaha.

Purdue essentially took its center off the floor and moved Hummel to the 5, where his three-point shooting and driving ability made him a difficult matchup for opposing big men. In turn, opponents sometimes would move a better athlete onto Hummel and assign their center, for lack of a better option, to guard Purdue's least-potent shooter, in that case, Terone Johnson. When that matchup presented itself at 11th-ranked Michigan on the Wolverines' senior day and against St. Mary's in the NCAA Tournament, Johnson destroyed them off the dribble, to the tune of 22 points in Ann Arbor and 21 against the Gaels, and Purdue won both games.

Purdue spread the floor, raining threes from Hummel, Ryne Smith and D.J. Byrd, and allowing lightning-quick point guard Lewis Jackson free reign with a ball-screen-heavy halfcourt offense not all that dissimilar from what Purdue ran for Edwards and Cline this season, although with different intent.

The keys that season: Tons of threes and very few turnovers.

"It's how we made up for getting crushed on the glass and not being very good defensively," Hummel said.

The keys this past season: Tons of threes and very few turnovers.

The point: It stands to reason to suggest that offensive M.O. not only transformed that season but may have also sewn the seeds for this past one.

"We just decided we were going to go small, take our lumps on the glass, but at least we were going to make a lot of threes," Hummel remembers. "It was kind of a weird way to play compared to what we were doing, but it was effective. We played small, shot a ton from the perimeter, let Lewis create and Terone kind of go to work.

"It was a lot of pick-and-roll stuff (Shrewsberry brought) like they ran at Butler, and now college basketball is so much pick-and-roll, but at the time it wasn't run as much. And we needed some new stuff, because we lost E'Twaun and JaJuan, and we ran so much (through them). He brought a lot of new ideas."

Now, Purdue is different today than it was then, obviously, and when Painter and Shrewsberry assess the strengths of their personnel today, the spotlight will shift largely from Edwards and Cline in the backcourt to Matt Haarms and Trevion Williams in the frontcourt.

"You have Matt and Trevion, who are skilled, but they're traditional bigs," Shrewsberry said. "You can play in a similar way (to 2011-12), but you don't have to sacrifice the size, for when you think about the other end of the floor when you're playing Kansas and they have Thomas Robinson and then Rob has to turn around and guard those guys. You can do the same kind of things, but you don't have to worry about the rebounds as much."

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