You probably don't need more than one hand to count power conference schools with less basketball anything than PSU.
psu has, at worst, the 3rd-4th best recruiting territory in the b1g (pre usc / ucla), manageable admissions standards and that b1g money cannon. If theyre willing to play the NIL game I see no reason they can't maintain a good mbb program
Supposedly an established NIL program was a big factor, and Shrewsberry being from Indiana and spending most of his coaching career in that state made ND more attractive. If Kraft is serious about having a bball program he’ll need to make a big hire, and I’m not sure we can do that from what’s available.
The AD has historically made no investment in the program beyond what was absolutely necessary. We are just now getting our football NIL into a competitive place and it's still lacking. Basketball NIL is abysmal. I agree that there's no reason we can't do better than making the tournament once a decade but there's never been any push internally or externally from donors to make that happen. State College may be in proximity to several rich recruiting areas in the region but it's pretty isolated being in the dead center of PA. Other than maybe Nebraska and Iowa I think we're the furthest from any one major city. Other than Chambers pulling some big time Philly kids from Roman Catholic years back there's never been any consistency recruiting those areas. Those kids have tons of choices. Why are they going to go hours away to the middle of nowhere to a program with no history, tradition, or routine success where basketball probably isn't even the second biggest sport at the school?
We have the worst facilities in the conference I would imagine including the worst arena, which was built for Bruce Springsteen and Luke Combs concerts, not basketball environment. We have a fanbase largely 2-3 hours away from State college that never really shows an interest in filling a shit environment arena during the weeknights. We have zero basketball specific donors because the AD hasn’t given a shit about it ever. We’ll hire a Pat league coach and keep the B1G money funnel rolling in and just pocket it and continue to trot out bottom 4 in the conference MBB squads
Yeah I'm confused by the convo maybe...in no way shape or form is the Penn State job anywhere near as good as the ND job.
when i evaluate a football / mens bball job I think about - recruiting territory - in-state big school competition - AD money - admissions standards I dont really look at "history" although obviously that plays major part, i.e duke is a wayyyy better job than my list would indicate ND hasnt made a final four since 1978 and they have to deal w/ IU, purdue and butler in-state. Although their recruiting pool is catholic kids
PSU has to compete with Villanova, Pitt, Temple, and the DMV schools for PA kids, it's gonna take a ton of effort to make headway there
Not to mention convince them to move to the middle of nowhere and play for a team that has basically no support
Are most Penn St football fans, fans of Villanova during basketball season like most Nebraska football fans are Creighton basketball fans?
I'm new to the area, but I don't think that Penn State fans like basketball at all. Anything west of Philly is wrestling.
I'm not going to say they don't exist but probably not outside of Philly. I think the majority of the PSU fan base is pretty indifferent about basketball. People show up when we're competitive but it's still largely an afterthought unless we're in the tournament.
I'm not sure how much this is the case anymore now that we're not winning national titles regularly but WVB was huge when I was in school.
I, for one, congratulate all of our B1G schools who made it to the tournament. A feat that was clearly too tall for my beloved Wolverines this season. It was especially gratifying to see the Spartans make it out of the first weekend for the first time this decade. Persistence pays off … a life lesson to us all. Good luck to all this off-season. See you next year.
I’d say there’s a significantly larger segment of Nebraska / Creighton and Notre Dame / Indiana split fans than there is Penn St / Nova, as evidenced by the split fans of the former 2 on this board.
We don’t want your pity congratulations, when March comes around we decide to shit the bed and become an embarrassment to the B1G.
Saw that Walker will be back for Sparty, that will be big. We apparently took Ball State's best player in the portal this morning, looks like a Walmart brand TJD. Depth piece.