This afternoon, Penn State men’s basketball held a summer media session with head coach Mike Rhoades and players Brant Byers and Ivan Juric taking the podium.
Byers is a transfer from Miami (OH) and will be a redshirt junior for the Nittany Lions this upcoming season. The Chambersburg, Pennsylvania native was the second leading scorer on a Redhawks’ team last season that finished with an overall record of 32-2, was ranked in the AP Top-25 and went to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 11 seed. The sharpshooting, 6′-8″ guard averaged 14.2 points and 4.1 rebounds while shooting 47.8% from the field last season.
Rhoades on Byers: “He’s been a lot of fun. I’m really excited for Brant…he loved Penn State all his life. From Day 1, he’s worked really hard, he’s super-competitive, he’s not afraid, you can coach Brant hard and he has an edge to him…he’s got a little swag to him when it comes to competition.”
Juric is coming back from a fantastic freshman campaign who may have been the best all-around player on the squad last season. Coach Rhoades said today that “He is probably 40 pounds bigger and stronger than he was from this time last year.” The 7′-0″ Croatian averaged 14.0 points, 9.8 rebounds and shot 51% from the field and 43% from beyond the arc last season.
Nittany Sports Now asked Coach Rhoades what player has stood out to him so far this offseason. Last year, Rhoades said it was Juric and that assessment came to fruition. This year, without hesitation, Rhoades said, “Roberts Blums from Davidson. He’s just my type of guy. My type of guard. He’s just super-competitive, works so hard, so into it. I knew he was a good player coming from a good program like Davidson he was going to have a lot of things that we were going to like, but he’s taking it to a whole other level.”
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Blums is a 6′-4″ junior guard from Riga, Latvia who was Davidson’s leading scorer last season averaging 12.4 points per game. He also registered 3.4 rebounds per contest and ranked seventh in the Atlantic 10 in both 3FG% (40.7%) and 3-pointers made (77). Blums tallied 21 double-digit scoring efforts and three 20-plus point games.
Rhoades also mentioned, Thomas Allard, a 6′-7″ graduate student guard from Division II Alabama-Huntsville as having an immediate impact to the team this offseason along with transfer, Dasonte Bowen, who is a 6′-2″ graduate student from Saint Bonaventure.
But Rhoades finished by saying, “A couple different guys without a doubt, but I’d say Roberts would be at the top of that list.”
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