As is its custom this winter season, Penn State’s basketball team was hot for awhile against Purdue on Thursday.
But, ultimately, their luck went cold.
Again.
Polar vortex cold.
(Even the high prince of college hoops, Jay Bilas, tweeted that Lamar Stevens was fouled.)
The Nittany Lions’ 99-90 overtime loss to visiting Purdue at the BJC on Thursday night was another nail-biter. Close-but-no-cigar aside, here’s the ice-cold hard truth about Pat Chambers’ squad. Penn State is now:
— Oh-for-10 in the Big Ten.
— Zero-for-eight in the 2019 calendar year.
— Seven and 15 overall.
The thing is, it’s not even record low territory for PSU basketball…although given the Big Ten’s new 20-game conference schedule, it’s still possible to a degree.
Since joining the Big Ten in 1992-93, Penn State has had five seven-win seasons under four different coaches — Bruce Parkhill (that inaugural B10 campaign), Jerry Dunn (2001-02, 2002-03), Ed DeChellis (2004-05) and, now, Chambers.
It’s a club Chambers does not want to join.
And there’s really only a snowball’s chance in hell that he will.
As they demonstrated on Thursday night (again), the Nittany Lions continue to be in almost every game. And much better than their record indicates. They have at least 11 more games — 10 regular-season and at least one B10 tournament game — remaining. It’s very possible they could win three or four or even five of them, although just four of those contests are at home.
No matter what happens, it’s clear that this is a big step backward from last season, when Penn State went 26-13 and won five straight to win the NIT tournament.
But, once again, Penn State basketball has regressed to the mean.
And seven-and-two-thirds seasons into the Chambers Era we have likely seen enough to know that bottom-line, Pat = Ed = Jerry.
It’s fair to compare, at this point. All three had about a 250-game run as Penn State’s head basketball coach (DeChellis 262 games, Chambers 256, Dunn 238). And all three, having gotten there different ways, have ended up producing basically the same results. Here’s where they stack up after Thursday night’s loss to Purdue:
WHO’S WHO?
The difference among the three in my book?
Dunn took Penn State to The Dance two times and DeChellis did it once. Chambers, who got Boston University to the NCAA Tournament in his second and final season as BU’s head coach in 2010-11, is still waiting to get Penn State there.
That Dunn took his second team to the NCAAs five years after the first one — essentially, Parkhill’s parting gift — showed that Dunn had, at least one point, the ability to totally retool.
Last season’s NIT championship was nice for Penn State. But DeChellis did that as well, in 2008-09. And the goal is to get to the final 68, not the finals of everybody else.
And yes, while it’s true that DeChellis left the cupboards bare for Chambers, Dunn (with back-to-back 7-21 seasons) did the same thing for DeChellis. When Parkhill left just weeks before the start of the 1994-95 season — Penn State’s first in the Bryce Jordan Center — he left Dunn one of the finest starting fives in Penn State hoops history.
That season, the Nittany Lions responded by packing the BJC every night, going 21-7 overall and 12-6 in the Big Ten, and earning a berth in the NCAA tournament.
But that is ancient history. To put things into perspective, the BJC is now in its 24th season as Penn State’s basketball homecourt. But hardly a homecourt advantage.
Here are a few more coaching comparisons:
Overall winning seasons —Dunn 4; DeChellis 2; Chambers 2.
Big Ten seasons .500 or better — Dunn 2; DeChellis 2; Chambers 1.
Longest losing streaks —Chambers 14 games, 8, 6, 6; DeChellis 13, 12, 12, 11; Dunn 10, 6, 6.
Worst Big Ten records —Dunn 2-14, 3-13, 3-15; DeChellis 1-15, 2-14, 3-13, 3-15; Chambers 0-10, 2-16, 4-14 (twice).
Average home attendance —Dunn 10,413; DeChellis 7,761; Chambers 7,387.
Attendance under Dunn was noticeably higher largely due to some excellent talent bequeathed to him by Parkhill and the novelty of the Jordan Center in its early years. Over his last two seasons, Dunn’s teams averaged 7,531 fans per game — exactly in the wheelhouse of Ed and Pat.
All three head coaches operated under any number of handicaps, but in the end the end results were the same.
CHAMBERS VS. THE BIG TEN
Chambers ranks tied for No. 5 in longest tenure among the current Big Ten head coaches, not bad when you consider that since 2011-12 Penn State ranks No. 13 in overall wins and winning percentage. Since Chambers was hired in June 2011, Rutgers and Illinois are on their third coaches, while six other schools are on their second head coach — Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State and Wisconsin.
Here are the Big Ten standings for conference games only over the past eight seasons (Maryland and Rutgers are in their fifth season in the B10). Rutgers, with four Big Ten wins in 2018-19, is closing the large gap between the Scarlet Knights and PSU, as crazy as that sounds:
1.) Michigan State — 98-38 (.720)
2.) Michigan and Wisconsin — both 90-46 (.662)
4.) Maryland — 54-29 (.650)
5.) Purdue and Ohio State — both 83-53 (.610)
7.) Indiana — 75-61 (.551)
8.) Iowa — 69-67 (.507)
9.) Nebraska — 53-83 (.390)
10.) Minnesota and Northwestern — both 51-85 (.375)
12.) Illinois — 49-87 (.360)
13.) Penn State — 38-98 (.279)
14.) Rutgers — 13-69 (.188)
