TodayOPINION: Wrong coach is leaving Lions
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Article RatingRiddle me this readers.
What do Schenley's DeJuan Blair and D.J. Kennedy, Aliquippa's Herb Pope, Chester's Nasir Robinson and the Morris twins of Prep Charter all have in common?
They will all play in the PIAA state championships this weekend in the backyard of the Penn State men's basketball program. They are all arguably the top six players in this state and not a single one of them will attend PSU to play hoops.
And none of them even remotely thought about going to PSU either. Evidently the talent in this state still isn't good enough to recruit at PSU.
There is a slim chance that Kennedy may get a look, but with bigger and better Division I schools after him, it's a long shot at best that he would consider coming to PSU late in the process.
It's embarrassing the riches in this state and not a single one will play for the Nittany Lions. In fact, so embarrassing, Robinson committed to Pitt a year early.
So as I sat in front of my computer Thursday listening to Penn State Athletics Director Tim Curley babble his way and duck and dodge questions as his press conference to announce the resignation of women's basketball coach Rene Portland, I thought to myself, the wrong basketball coach is headed out the door up at University Park.
The other basketball “coach” is the one who should be in boiling hot water.
Portland, for all of her supposed politically incorrect rules and basketball bylaws, was able to keep a good crop of talent at home. She recruited the local high schools well, including problem child Jennifer Harris, now in hindsight a mistake that cost her the job.
The last time the men's team did any damage around this area is when they picked up Trinity's Mike Walker.
They've failed miserably to land state talent like Gerry McNamara, Richard Hamilton, both players who won national titles at Syracuse and UConn respectively. They couldn't get products like Harrisburg's Alphonso Dawson or Ricardo Brown.
Sniffing the bigger city schools both in Philly and Pittsburgh seems out of the question too.
They will tell you it's because they don't want to take chances on “prospects,” that can't cut it the Penn State way.
Seems pretty lazy to me if you aren't willing to help a kid that might have some academic struggles.
Current basketball coach Ed DeChellis couldn't even recruit the local high school just down the road from his office. Four State College Little Lions basketball players currently play Division I basketball, including Gabe Norwood, who made it to the Final Four with George Mason last season, Eric Meister who made it to the dance with Holy Cross this season and Kevin Kanaskie, leading scorer for Middle Tennessee State and son of current DeChellis assistant Kurt Kanaskie. Former State College star Willie Morse was a verbal commitment to Penn State when Jerry Dunn was head coach. Ed DeChellis told Willie he wasn't good enough to play there, so Willie moved on to St. Bonaventure and now Colgate.
Meister's father was a star at Penn State in the 1970's.
All three of those players are no worse than anyone on the roster right now. Norwood was told he could walk on, Meister wasn't even heavily recruited and no one's really sure what the deal with Kanaskie was, according to one coach in the State College area, he too was told he could walk on.
Walk on?
Evidently Ed's eyes weren't focused on Norwood's role with Mason when they beat North Carolina and UConn last season. If he can hang with those two, he can surely hang in the Big Ten.
My biggest question, why isn't the men's team ruled with the same iron fist that just ripped Rene's job away from her? And yes, the school ripped it away. Anyone with any shred of common sense knows this wasn't a mutual decision. You could hear it in Curley's voice when he told reporters in the Beaver Stadium media room yesterday that he informed head football coach Joe Paterno of “our decision.”
If that's not a cryptic message, what is?
Does anyone at Penn State even care about the men's basketball team? I'd like to, but when a group of decent young men regress instead of progress after four years, it's time to go in a different direction.
In a conference that will attract rising Mid-Major coaches or hot flavor of the month assistants to both Michigan and Iowa, and a conference that lured Tubby Smith away from one of the top five elite jobs in all of basketball to an at-best pedestrian Minnesota club, you mean to tell me PSU isn't willing to really do a “national search” for a basketball coach? A legit men's basketball coach?
You mean Penn State, the billion dollar institution cannot fork over some coin to get a decent name in the school to coach basketball?
Curley said after Dunn was fired the school would do a “national search” for their new guy. That national search had one name on it.
He said yesterday the school will now do a “national search” for their new women's coach, when it's clear everyone under the Blue and White sky wants former star Susie McConnell-Serio.
Losing was enough to push Portland fully out of the door and despite any other shortcomings, it allowed the school to sell her out. Apparently no one cares if the men's team spins around in below mediocre standards for a while.
There's a reason why the men's team has failed miserably to out draw a Cher concert as the highest grossing event in BJC history. It's not hard to see why getting better isn't in the cards either.
Unless someone at Penn State starts to actually care about the men's basketball product.
