Purdue @ Penn State

[shocker]

Sorry COACH I did read your post. You mentioned geography and coaching as reasons for their failures. I discredited both. :shock:
Your explanation of why UConn is down this year, sounds pretty much like PSU's problems as well, wouldn't you say?
And if you watched their game vs. Mich St. I would have to say that PSU's defense was pretty decent.
Eddie must have did something really different last year to have the success (if you call a NIT title success) he did. Or maybe it was he had a couple more 'players' who could score?
So what do you think he did last year that he isnt doing this year?? Seriously, I am curiousas to your thoughts.
Dontcha just love it when a non nit witter is taking up for their program! :lol:

[Coach]

Their problem seems simple if we are looking at the difference from last year to this year...

Last year, Stanley Pringle and Jamelle Cornley did a lot more for the program than people who don't watch them often realize. Pringle could handle point duties and was an outstanding three point shooter. Cornley was one of the best big men that PSU has had in the last ten years especially since he was really a "little" big man.

Replace those two with two true freshmen... Tim Frazier and Bill Edwards. That's what the team did and it didn't work very well. Battle was really the only scoring threat and he took some awful, awful shots in those tight games. Everyone has griped about the end of game coaching in these tight ones. I don't think the plays have been that great, but who in the world is going to score besides Battle? They forced things to him because he seemed like he was the ONLY thing they had. Jones didn't step up this year like I know I hoped he would. Jeff Brooks didn't develop all that well. He showed flashes of being the Mr. Basketball he was in Kentucky as a high school kid, but they were few and far between. David Jackson...not a consistent scorer. These guys were all back from the year before, but none of them developed into a bigger scoring threat.... One guy did, and that is sophomore Chris Babb. He got more confident and played better at the end of the year. Coach DeChellis was trusting him more to shoot on plays towards the end of games and it really helped. If he wasn't a scoring threat, I wouldn't have wanted him shooting at the end either.


Take a look--http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/teams/paf/stats

One guy in double digits. Yuck.

Last year- http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball ... ?year=2008


As for the team playing better when Babb got better-
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/players/81252

From Jan 24th on, Babb scored in double digits in 7 of 12 games and many times was up around the 15 PPG mark. He also shot more often in games once 2010 started.

This is why I think they'll be better next year. I feel Babb has become the second scorer and is a shooter. I also feel that Jackson and Brooks got a little better...enough that one can probably score closer to 10 per game next year. Finally, I still have hope that Andrew Jones will develop. He's 6 stinking 10 and is decent. He's just not physical/consistent enough. I'm also thinking Frazier will get better and Bill Edwards might fill that physical presence that the team missed this year without Cornley. He is a similar player.


Ok...enough for now. I don't put all the blame on Eddie. I think he has gotten better players than Dunn was able to get. He had a run with his first group, and I think he'll have a nice run with this group. You can't just win every 3-4 years though if you want to become a consistent program. You can't always wait til a team is full of juniors and seniors because when that happens, you have to restart everything again in two years.

[shocker]

That has been my point all along. They need scorers and players.....everyone wants to jump all over eddie and blame demographics. You hit the nail on the head with your last post. And I will guarentee you next year his bandwagon will be full tilt!

[WPIAL~Titan]

Stan Pringle did a lot for the program...Does he have a room in the library named after him?

[The Ancient Enemy]

I don't even know where to start w you guys sometimes.

Look.

There's 3 types of "fans" of the PSU basketball program. One camp says we have the money to do it, the facilities, the prestige, and the academics to succeed, whether we are in happy valley, an urban setting, or on Venus.

The 2nd camp babies Ed DeChellis wholeheartedly and says "we just had a bad year." I will continue to say this, because it is FACT: when a team loses all their games by a close margin, that's a coaching problem. If they lose at the beginning of the season, that's understandable. But NO progress was made at the end of the year, where they continued to lose games in the exact same fashion. THAT IS A COACHING FAULT.

Camp 3 has a total defeatist mentality and says "we can't win, regardless" bc of the campus location. Crack is a hell of a drug.

Then u also have idiots who say things like "we need to hire a coach w character issues". No, chickenhead, we do not. There's plenty of coaches who have built programs in the middle of nowhere with nowhere NEAR the facilities, money, etc that penn state has.

The athletic dept is not serious enough about basketball. There are TWO revenue sports: football and basketball. We have been actively scheduling ridiculous non conference football opponents to pad the cashboxes, since the football program is what pays for the women's equestrian teams to fly to freakin' Madison every season. Etc, etc. There will be a rude awakening in the athletic offices when joe leaves and the football program's immediate success rate is potentially compromised. Now... Don't you think basketball should get more emphasis, since there are only 2 revenue sports and we only take advantage of ONE of them? Is this rocket science to want to have a solid, money-making basketball program?

The fans would come if they didn't play the same dang game every night and lose at the end every dang night. DeChellis had a great year in 2008 but it is the seasons like 2009 where a coach's worth really comes out. He's a terrible coach and should have been fired 5 years ago. So should Tim Curley.

[WPIAL~Titan]

Nooooooo, TAE...Eddie D shouldn't have been fired....HE NEVER SHOULD'VE BEEN HIRED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Eddie Dee was and still is ill-prepared to handle a major college basketball coaching job. So he won the Not Important Tournament last year...So what? Good job, #66 in the country. He has not recruited well enough and has made too many mistakes in recruiting. Mike Walker? Are you kidding me? He was Juniata College material. That's just one example. Eddie needs to be gone, period.

Jerry Dumb was a bad hire too, for a lot of reasons. Bruce Parkhill spent way too much time with the coeds and was quietly shown the door.

Over the years, PSU has failed to hire a coach to successfully lead that program. With their facilities, and being in a power conference, there is absolutely no reason why PSU shouldn't be able to have a top tier B10 team.

PSU needs to go and get somebody who will go out and recruit high quality players (even cheat), and put fans in the stands. To do this, they need to dip into their pockets and pay for that type of coach. A Thuggins, Calipari, or Pitino type would fill the bill.

With all this said, I do understand that PSU is geographically kind of in "no man's land" being in the B10 because the Big East will get most marquee players on the east coach (metro Philly, NYC, North Jersey) and the states of Ohio/Indiana/Michigan are owned by tOSU, Indiana, MichSt, and Mich, and DC players gerenally go Big East or ACC. Thus, it is hard for PSU to recruit being in the B10 and being located here, because the B10 is so irrelevant to HS boys' basketball players in the east.

Until PSU gets a "name", a known commodity, to attract quality players and big time boosters, PSU will be floundering in the cesspool of B10 men's basketball, along with Northwestern.