Penn State's Ed DeChellis escapes to Annapolis

Lord, I forgot he was from Monaca.

Great pizza place in that town (Yolanadas) and a cold, cold high school football field.

 

I hear Dave Bliss is available. He should be able to dead-on recruit some good players.

 

I also hear Fran Ganter is available. That would work for 87% of their fan base.

 

Yeah, Jerry Sandusky would be a touchy hire right about now.

 

Maybe someone mentioned this earlier and maybe not.

Recruiting is the bane of any major (or minor) college basketball coach's existence.

They all hate it -- having to whore themselves out to the whims of 17-year-old kids.

But... if you trade Penn State for Navy, you also trade having to go try and beg/deal recruits to go to a bottom-tier Big Ten program for people already interested in the U.S. Naval Academy. You don't deal with many disrespectful and entitled boneheads when you recruit for Navy.

I would have to think THAT is an element of the decision.

Let's say you're in sales. You are offered a position with a) more stability, b) comparable pay (even a little less) but c) NO cold calling. Yeah...that probably looks good to a coach of DeChellis' age. It's okay to be "cold calling" when you are 35 but not when you are on the "back nine" of your coaching shelf life.

Good move for him.

 

Really good piece by some big-time Penn State alum:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/thetoydepartment/2011/05/for_dechellis_annapolis_is_a_s.html

 

Chris Korman rules.

 

I'm one of the 11 true Penn State basketball fans Korman mentions in his blog. I'm probably the only one of the 11 that doesn't live in Centre County and certainly the only one who grew up in the state of Indiana.

I'm shocked this thread has hit two pages. Only Talor Battle deserves two pages on any message board when referencing Penn State basketball.

Ed DeChellis always reminded me of Gil from The Simpsons. Nice guy, unbelievable commitment to Coaches vs. Cancer stemming from his own battle and the death of his parents, etc. But bad luck just always seemed to hit him. Claxton blowing out his knee early in a Big Ten season where Penn State might have snuck a bid. The dogshit non-conference schedule coupled with Jake Kelley's back to back banked in 3-pointers in '09 (though the NIT was fun as far as consolation prizes go). Jeff Brooks getting hurt this year...twice, including in the NCAA last-second loss against Temple.

Just when things were always looking up, the bottom fell out.

I mean, give Ed credit...Penn State was God awful at the end of the Dunn era. I mean...they were the worst of the worst when he got there and nothing was easy. But, at the end of the day, it took him seven years to build to a team that went 19-14 and only got in the tournament because he built a bond with a high school guard from Albany who wound up having bigger balls than Beaver Stadium.

But there were issues with him as a coach that sort of went ignored because he was a nice guy and because he coached where no one gave a shit. I always gave Ed the benefit of the doubt, but it's also not like John Wooden is walking out the door (contrary to what Dick Vitale might tweet or whatever).

And the bottom was really going to fall out next year, so DeChellis was smart to get out to a low-pressure spot before he wound up fired.

I get that the administration sucks. I really do. I've been there as a student. I'm there as a fan. And I've been up close in covering other programs to see what they have and Penn State does not.

At the same time, it only takes six or eight guys to compete in basketball, not 85. Along those same lines however, I think Penn State's biggest hurdle in being consistent in basketball is their fear of NCAA trouble. They've always taken pride of steering clear of that stuff in football and, obviously, it's even murkier waters in basketball. It seems those young, hot, up-and-coming, banging on dorm room doors like Josh Pastner are also the kinds of guys who could be a little lax with NCAA regulations. Penn State will tolerate losing clearly, but won't support anything like that happening in a sport that ranks somewhere between wrestling, spring football, and now ice hockey.

And even with all this negativity about, to be honest, one of the only two sports teams I care about (Penn State football being the other), I'm wildly intrigued and somewhat hopeful to see if Tim Curley actually opens the checkbook for a sport that actually matters. He's gone for home run hires in wrestling (and really, I'm not a native Pennsylvanian I know, but who the fuck really cares about college wrestling?) and men's soccer, stealing away big name folks from established programs. Maybe I'm just crazy in thinking that he actually tries to make a splash with a hire in the only other money making sport on campus.

It's a head scratching time for me, one of those 12 Penn State basketball fans.

And again, I'm shocked that any of this talk showed up on SportsJournalists.com.

 

Maybe wrong choice of adjectives there.

 

If African-Americans can be persuaded to play hoops in West Lafayette, Starkville, Manhattan, etc., I fail to see what makes State College so toxic.

 

It ... just is. I don't know how to explain it. It just is.

 

Without finding stats on those schools, I'd bet they have much higher minority populations than Penn State.

When they did the sit-ins eight or 10 years ago, the percentage of black students was somewhere around 12 percent.

EDIT: I mistyped, it was minority students in total.