Had some time on my hands Monday night and watched Penn State roll past Jacksonville State, 76-61, in Happy Valley. After a slow start and only a 37-32 halftime lead, the Nittany Lions broke open the game early in the second half. Lamar Stevens and Rasir Bolton led the way with 25 points apiece (more on them later).
Not many of the college basketball experts have high hopes for the Pat Chambers-coached Nittany Lions this season (granted, the loss of star guard and leading scorer Tony Carr is a big one), but I beg to differ on this one. For starters, Penn State has three returning from a team that went 26-13 (second most wins in school history) and finished 9-9 in the Big 10 before winning five straight games for an NIT championship. Okay, so the NIT is nothing like it was in the old days when the NCAA took just 16 teams to the tournament, leaving the rest of the pack to battle it out in the NIT. Still, no votes received (52nd or higher) for Penn State in the pre-season AP Top 25? Even read recently in the Rush the Court Blog that Norlander has Penn State ranked #164 in its pre-season rankings. Did a little googling and found out that Norlander is actually respected CBS Sports Journalist Matt Norlander. Sorry, Matt, but how can you be taken that seriously when you have the Nittany Lions one spot behind low major St. Francis of PA just down the road from Happy Valley. Penn State would have a legitimate chance of running the table of it was playing in the NEC (St. Francis’ league). Would be happy to wager a fat one with you that the Nittany Lions will finish at least 40 spots ahead of St. Francis in the final RPI.
So let’s take a closer look at Penn State. From the land of Linebacker U, comes a new brand of D — but now, instead of stuffing the run, the Nittany Lions are snuffing the rim. Penn State has the personnel to be an elite defensive team on the national level — how does that not give you a chance to be an NCAA-caliber team? Sounds a bit cliche, but a good shooting team has an asset that can vanish at any time (how many times have we seen that happen in March Madness) while a rugged defensive team has something that will be there almost every night. The Nittany Lions return Big 10 All-Defensive Team members Mike Watkins (among the nation’s top shot blockers) and Josh Reaves, who led the Big 10 in steals. Add in rugged on-the-ball defender Jamari Wheeler (who backed up Carr last season and defends much better
Penn State’s two biggest question marks that need to be answered: will Watkins, who has been practicing but missing game action so far for mental health issues, be ready for Big 10 play to anchor the defense? And do the Nittany Lions have enough firepower to move up among the Big 10’s elite? Power forward Stevens, the most outstanding player in last year’s NIT, attacks the rim with the best and could be an emerging star on the national level. Stevens, who averaged 15.5 points last season, is off to a great start, with 47 points in his first two games. The Nittany Lions will surely guard the 3-point line this season but how well they knock down 3’s themselves might determine how far they go. Reaves was a streaky offensive player last season but found a way to improve his 3-point shooting percentage from 32 to 38 percent. Another jump like that for Reaves will go a long way to making Penn State a team to watch in March.
Finally, it’s time to give Chambers his due for the job he has done at Penn State. It’s taken a while for Chambers, now entering his 8th season in Happy Valley, but his wise recruiting, and coaching, is finally showing results. Chambers and his staff are not wasting their time chasing McDonald’s All-Americans and instead, are honing in on the best prospects in the 100-to-300 range. Don’t think that you can’t win on the national level with those type of players; just ask Brad Stevens, with the tremendous run he had at Butler a few years back. Bear witness to the Jacksonville State victory, when Bolton, Penn State’s third-ranked freshman recruit at #303 nationally, poured in 25 points off the bench.
Knowing a little bit about Penn State basketball from the days when my father, Dick Harter, was the coach there in the late 1970s, it’s hard not to admire the job Chambers is doing. Penn State has always been a football school and never been an easy job for any basketball coach. As a college coach, my father had a great run at Penn, a good run at Oregon, and college career-ending run at Penn State. Same for NBA assistant coaching legend Johnny Bach, who saw his college coaching career end in (Un)Happy Valley before sitting alongside Phil Jackson during the Chicago Bulls’ glory years. As a young assistant coach at UAB in 1989, I remember talking to then Penn State Coach, Bruce Parkhill on a flight back to State College after our team played the Nittany Lions in a tournament before Christmas. I was not at all surprised to hear the frustration that Parkhill was experiencing at Penn State despite having decent success and was even less surprised a few years later when he retired from coaching at a young age.
So, here we have Chambers, climbing the Mt. Everest of college basketball jobs and doing a pretty darn good job of slowly working his way towards the summit. Chambers comes from a great background, having played for legendary coach Herb Magee at Philadelphia Textile (now Thomas Jefferson University) and coached under Jay Wright at Villanova. As an assistant coach at Pace University, I remember playing against Magee’s great teams during Chambers’ time there. He was a rare point guard, who, depending on the read, had the ability to find either the cutter or the screener in Magee’s well-designed set plays. Now, with some exceptional vision from the sidelines, Chambers might just have a chance to take Penn State basketball to a place it has never been before.
Overtime Coach-Couch Talk:
It was nice to see former Division II coaching competitor, Jim Ferry on the Penn State sidelines as a Chambers’ assistant.