Basketball program: What happened?
- Thread starter Delcolion915
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Ace Baldwin is hurt (back injury) and cannot play effectively. He is the player that makes this team function well, offensively and defensively.
Maybe it's time Coach Rhodes sits him? It's hard to compete with a liability on the court
I do follow wrestling. I do appreciate your detailed analysis though 😂
Our program hasn't been very good. We fired our best coach due to some woke bs.
Shrews has been terrible at his new stop.
It's PSU basketball.
I agree. There is no opportunity to make the NCAA tourney. Time to get the young Freshnan PG more PT. Let Baldwin rest the next few games.
Just my take but I don’t think they’re horrible. Tonight vs Ohio State was horrible.
The season showed promise a month ago and then it went south with a few close losses.
I wouldn’t give up on Coach Rhodes yet. The new college bball landscape is a very slippery slope and PSU isn’t exactly a dream destination for coaches.
PSU has enough talent/ pieces to win more games though. I’ll be anxious to see how they perform down the stretch.
The season showed promise a month ago and then it went south with a few close losses.
I wouldn’t give up on Coach Rhodes yet. The new college bball landscape is a very slippery slope and PSU isn’t exactly a dream destination for coaches.
PSU has enough talent/ pieces to win more games though. I’ll be anxious to see how they perform down the stretch.
Chambers had this team moving in right direction. That team they had during the canceled tournament was built for a deep run and the next year they won games in tourney with his recruits. Shrewsbury did nothing and sent team back to square one. Rhodes needs time
I’m very close to saying that Kraft needs to make a change after this season. Tonight was a complete embarrassment against a mediocre opponent. It’s beginning to look like this program is going nowhere with the current coach.
Without a healthy Baldwin they will continue to struggle.
Yea, injuries or not we have an older and more experienced lineup like we did two years ago when we made the tournament with Shrews. Granted, we made a late unexpected run in that season just to have a chance at the NCAA tournament, and I guess that is still technically possible for this season, but this ship seems to be sinking quickly. If we don’t even qualify for our own conference tournament, which is possible, then it’s already time for a change.
Letting go of Chambers who recruited tough kids from Philly who really wanted to be at PSU was a huge mistake. It seems like this team lacks toughness and they shrivel up and crumble in crunch time and tough moments. A lot of them were transfers and I see a lot of moments where they just go through the motions. You didn’t see that with players under Chambers from 2017-2020. They outworked their opponents on most occasions, and you could just tell they loved playing for him and being at PSU.
Letting go of Chambers who recruited tough kids from Philly who really wanted to be at PSU was a huge mistake. It seems like this team lacks toughness and they shrivel up and crumble in crunch time and tough moments. A lot of them were transfers and I see a lot of moments where they just go through the motions. You didn’t see that with players under Chambers from 2017-2020. They outworked their opponents on most occasions, and you could just tell they loved playing for him and being at PSU.
Didn't even know we were playing today. Apparently that was a good thing. Wow. The wheels have come completely off. Not sure how you can take a good Michigan team to the wire on the road and then lose by 20 at home to a mediocre Ohio State team. I thought we could beat OSU at home.
Baldwin is hurt and I assume Puff did not play either so that is obviously hurting us. Still, you can't lose like that. Terrible.
This season looks totally lost. I would not fire Rhoades after this season unless we play like we did tonight for the rest of the season. Regardless, next season needs to be a Dance ticket or else.
Baldwin is hurt and I assume Puff did not play either so that is obviously hurting us. Still, you can't lose like that. Terrible.
This season looks totally lost. I would not fire Rhoades after this season unless we play like we did tonight for the rest of the season. Regardless, next season needs to be a Dance ticket or else.
Time?... Rhodes will self-select out, just like DeChellis did... PSU MBB is a graveyard and the longer your stay the deeper your hole gets. Better to go back to mid-major win 20+ games, occassionally get the automatic bid for winning the conference tourney, then call it day. I used to have hope and thought Rhodes was the answer but it is clear from his body language he sees the writing on the wall. Will not be surprised if they don't win another game this season. That great recuriting class from 2024 will portal out in March and he'll be back to having to build a roster all over again. Next up will be Joe Crispin...He'll also have visions of grandeur that will quickly meet reality and on it goes.
And one other thing.... Why on earth do we play these stupid games in Rec Hall and the Palestra? It is like we have 12 conference road games! You want to play there for nostalgia then do it in November or December against a Quad 4 opponent you can mop the floor with not a Big Ten opponent when you need to protect your home floor. All of that said we can't have it all... Kraft just went all in paying a DC $3 mill plus and Kael needs to get every penny so does the WVB coach, there is only so many dollars to go around so hoops is where the clamp is placed. Peace.
Yea, that ain’t happening. Literally all the players in our rotation are seniors except Niederhauser and Dillione. We’re going to be even worse next season. That’s why I say unless we have some miracle turnaround this season and at least make the NIT then it’s time to move on to a new coach who can get some good transfers and solid recruits.
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I think that it’s getting close to where a difficult decision may have to be made. This team has won two games in January; that’s totally unacceptable.
There’s a coach at New Mexico who’s doing a great job and already has coached in the Big 10; I’d be sending out feelers to see if he’d be interested. This program is going nowhere with the current coach; the handwriting is on the wall.
Richard Pitino, interesting. Great genes, in his blood to coach I guess. He got fired at Minny. Not sure why. NM is 17-4 and 9-1 in conference. Very good but a few steps down from the B10.
I want to see if Rhoades can pull this together or if it is just a dumpster fire the rest of the season. If the latter then probably cutting bait is smart but not sure of the financial implications to do that.
PSU is a .500 program all time. Very few schools are at that level. Not good and tells you all you need to know about schools commitment. Krafty has got to fix it.
Ace is injured, Puff has been out and Hicks has not shot nearly as well in Big Ten play recently. Agree that he should be getting the young kids a little bit more time but to those who think that keeping chambers would’ve been the answer, he’s probably the worst X/O coach that Penn State has ever had. Plus there’s nobody that was ever worse with baseline outbound situations or understanding how to use the Clock late in games. Chambers had one/two good classes with Carr and Stevens in those guys and everybody thinks he would be John Calipari because of it. Next year‘s class is highest rated in Penn State history so let’s play that out.
It is painful to remember how many games we lost on designed plays coming out of a timeout. All losses count the same, but Chambers would give hope until it mattered most- then crush me
Rhoades deserves and will get time. Even our "veterans" have only been on campus not even a full cycle. We will never out- talent most of the upper Big Ten- but we can win with a good coach, scrappy defense, and cohesiveness.
That is how it felt early on- but is not so now. Shrewsbury is in a similar position at ND- except his incoming class is much better than ours- which is partly the power of a traditional power team/brand- and is a big reason why he left. Dude maxed out at his peak- we'd all likely do the same in regular business- it was our endless hope and brief flirtation with success that made many here hate our Bill O'Brien of the hardwood. He used us
PSU hoops is an abusive relationship- but I love my alma mater and have pretty much accepted it.
It's Penn State basketball. This is the way it is. Been this way for over 50 years. You can't get inner city kids to live in a bucolic area. Penn State basketball has only one chance to become good. They have to hire a big name coach. Hire Larry Bird or Charles Barkley or someone like that. That is their only chance to become relevant.
He also took UNM to the Tournament last season; he's doing a great job there. I've watched parts of several of their games this season and in their conference tournament last season and love how they play.
I watched very little of the game last night, but what I saw was completely embarrassing, and this was against a team that, at least record wise, isn't much better than PSU. The team looked like a rag tag bunch of players whom you would see in pcik up game with a bunch of regular college students; just a bunch of fundamentally unsound and physically overmatched players. It's just an awful product.
I agree that they need to spend the money to bring in a big name "college" coach or a coach who is taking a program in a lesser conference to the Tournament almost every season. However, explain to me how places in corn country like Iowa State and Kansas and Illinois, and places in the desert like Arizona, can attract enough good players to field perennially top 10 to 20 teams?
PSU is within three hours or less of NYC, Philly, DC, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc., and it's the best athletic program in the Northeast; it easily should be able to attract enough good players to finish .500 or better in the Big 10 almost every season.
ND also is playing in the very bad ACC, and they still have a bad record. God, even this wretched PSU team beat VT this season and gave Clemson a good game. If ND played in the Big 10, they'd have just as bad a conference record as PSU, although they probably would've played better basketball in those games than PSU.
Arizona is a blue blood. Olsen built it into that. He is kinda their JoePa in that regard so you can't really compare us to them. The others you mention have no football equity to speak of. Perhaps the fact that football is so all encompassing and dominant at PSU hurts the hoops program from attracting a big name coach and also is a turn off to some of the better hoops players. Not sure but the fact that we have essentially been a downtrodden program forever is not something you can easily escape when trying to attract talent.
Rhoades came from a mid-major that often made the tournament. It certainly seems he loves PSU but is that enough?
Perhaps the young players currently @ PSU and the incoming class will have full buy-in. If not, he won't last another two years.
Regarding Rhoades, it's one thing to be bad because you're just not as good as the other guy, but it's another thing to be bad and poorly coached, and that's what I see from this team. As bad as I believe that this team is, and they were disgraceful last night, they still have been in contention to win at least the Oregon, Iowa and Michigan games in the last minute, and their execution failed miserably. Most of that is probably on the players, but a portion also has to be on the coaching.
I think that a lot of last night was just the result of the Iowa and Michigan losses causing a loss of morale, and the team just crashed. However, that also is a coach's job to mitigate something like that, and Rhoades obviously failed miserably.
I'm very happy with Kraft as the AD, and I believe that he has a bottom line attitude to things, which means you either win or you move on to another place. Hopefully, he will be apply this attitude to several programs, like the two basketball teams and even the hockey team. I know Rhoades only has been here for two seasons and walked into a tough situation, but I just don't like what I've seen for most of this season, and that goes for even when they were scoring over a 100 points in the meaningless rent a victim non-con games because you knew that that wasn't transferrable to the Big 10 games.
I am not sire that is completely true - look at Kansa, been really food for a long time and in the middle of nowhere - but we have zero tradition to fall back on - it is frustarting.
The home game at the Palestra doesn't work. That needs to stop. Rec Hall OTOH would be the ideal place to host games.
SIDE NOTE: The new ParkMobile app for parking sucks. They can have my $10 bucks, but please make things more convenient. Also buying snacks once in the BJC blows. last week i bought Combos, water and M&Ms and still have no idea if I paid, or how much it cost. Please, go easy on us oldies.
I do like the games in Rec Hall as well but when you do it once it is a road game for both teams. Unless our team is regularly practicing in that facility it is an adjustment versus the BJC. I played hoops in high school, road games are always challenging... different lights, different rim, different shooting background, etc. Sure if we had NBA talent it wouldn't matter but a once and done is difficult.
For Christ sake stop blaming that fiasco last night on the damn baskets at Rec Hall 😂.
I think you need to give Rhodes two more years but that is a lame excuse for that pathetic performance last night.
I think you need to give Rhodes two more years but that is a lame excuse for that pathetic performance last night.
Shrews was at PSU two years and left on his own accord.
We have to be careful to not overreact about this lousy stretch. I think if we continue with the dumpster fire then Kraft should start lining up options. In fact do it now if he can do it confidentially. I'm not crazy about canning Rhoades after 2 years but if there is a better option out there that would be interested in the gig then maybe we make a change.
The other approach which I like better is to give him a 3rd year. Ace is hurt, Puff hurt. Tough situation. Obviously we want to see the team show some life in February and at least escape out of the bottom 3 in order to qualify for the BTT. If not then I vote to keep him but his seat is very hot (even if we make the BTT) because next year can't be a repeat and we need to make the Dance.
