Penn State Basketball: 12 candidates to replace Micah Shrewsberry as head coach

Ryan Odom

The commitment to basketball at Penn State has been underwhelming in recent years, with the Nittany Lions’ program not exactly a top power in the basketball world. That being said, this can still be a good program in the years to come and Shrewsberry showed just that. Why not bring aboard a young head coach who’s already showed that you don’t have to be a top power to succeed in this sport?

Odom has been an assistant at numerous schools, with the former point guard coaching at South Florida, Virginia Tech, and Charlotte among his stops. After beginning his head coaching career at Lenoir-Rhyne, a D2 school in North Carolina, he took over at UMBC and led the Retrievers to that historic upset over 1-seed Virginia back in 2018. For the last two seasons, he’s been head coach at Utah State and got the Aggies back to the NCAA Tournament with a great season this year.

His time with the Aggies has been successful to this point, but heading back to the east coast would likely suit Odom well. A job like this might be the perfect next step for him to show that he can win with the Nittany Lions, where things will be much tougher than at his previous coaching jobs. He’s a great head coach, a solid recruiter, and he can ask his UMBC successor Jim Ferry all about Penn State is he’s really interested in a marriage with the Nittany Lions.