I for one do not like Chris Babb

THE SCHEDULE IS A JOKE!!! IT’S ALL CURLEY’S FAULT.

My ass. I bet a home game against NJIT would hit the spot right about now.

I like Cal!

http://www.happyhourvalley.com/2009/11/20/penn-state-basketball-winning-is-overrated/

My empire of dirt….

Losing to a 7 win team from a year ago and then going out and doing that against Tulane…

It’s never a good sign when you are putting your walk-on guard out there over 4 star players…

The Original Lady Lion Basketball Team is 3-0.

Battle and the girls aren’t even the best female basketball team here.

Can you jump off the bandwagon any faster? I mean, really, bad losses happen. This is a team in transition. To suggest that Ed DeChellis should be fired or is doing a bad job is absolutely asinine!

Let’s see, he brought in Tim Frazier, who looks like a baller, Sasa who has shown some great raw offensive abilty, we’ve got Taran Buie coming in next year, and our 2011 recruiting started off with a bang with Trey Burke. He brought some of the best recruits in Penn State basketball history on campus, which doesn’t mean anything, but it’s better than anything else we’ve had in a long time.

There are bound to be some growing pains with this team. Talor Battle is adjusting to being “the man.” Andrew Jones is learning how to be a first option in the post. Jeff Brooks is starting to develop into a real nice forward. We’re a great shooting team that just doesn’t have them falling right now.

This is rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up, so let’s put the bad feelings behind us and move forward. There are still plenty of big games on the schedule, the entire Big Ten conference slate, and the NCAA Tournament was NEVER a likely destination. But if this team can, and WILL get better and better as the season goes on, we’ll know that the future is bright.

If you want to get off the bandwagon now, you better not jump back on in a few months.

I expected the casual fans who didn’t watch a single minute of PSU basketball to come out of the woodwork following a bad stretch such as this spewing the typical “Fire ED” stuff or suggesting that we’re better off with the previous coach who tanked the program into oblivion. Let them vent. They’ll be pulling another disappearing act once the team starts performing similar to last year.

Lets be honest here. I think we all knew that we were losing a lot and were going to step back a bit. It is going to take some time to develop a rotation and lineups that work. Today we played 12 guys. I would hope once we get to the meat of the schedule we will not be going that deep into the bench. Ed is trying to figure what he can get out of these guys and what lineups can get you points and stops. I think the free throw shooting and turnovers are two things that we can look to as strong positives.

The problem is setting up an offense and getting points from someone other than Battle. I do not see scoring coming Babb and hope later in the year we will see Frazier and Battle as the normal duo in the backcourt. Frazier seems to have the explosion to create a shot which I have not seen from Babb. To me Babb equals Morrisey without the heart.

The other issue is getting something near production inside. We all know what Smash meant to the team last year and I do not see where that inside production is going to come from. We are not getting anything thus far out of Andrew Jones or Ott. If those two cannot step it up considerably I think this could be a long season.

Oh yeah we should probably play some defense also. That has not really existed the last couple games.

In conclusion, I do not think that this is even close to a tournament team but it is a young team that could still be entertaining this season. When they are on the court an upset is always going to be possible and hopefully by the Big Ten season the team will grow and create a rotation which can win some games.

We lost the Seahawks. They are a pro team. Matt Hasselback. Steve Largent, Kenny Easley, Curt Warner. What did you expect? And we lost to Tulane. They were undefeated once. Pretty sure Shaun King was the QB. And wasn’t Rich Rodriguez the offensive coordinator there? He’s a genius.

Dunn inherited a rising program from Bruce Parkhill and while he rode it to some success, he later went on to completely tank the program from a coaching and recruiting standpoint despite the Sweet 16 run in 2001. Tout his “better record” all you want but the fact of the matter is, the program was run into the ground under his watch.

DeChellis on the other hand, was tasked with cleaning up Dunn’s man-made train wreck. Sure, his overall record has been worse (particularly in Big Ten play) but the team has done something that didn’t happen under any of his predecessors and that’s win a postseason tournament. Most importantly though, recruiting has improved drastically from when he first arrived: nabbing guys like Cornley, Battle, Brooks, Frazier, and Buie while it doesn’t put us into UNC or Kansas territory, is a major step up from kids we used to land several years ago.

And you know what? Even if DeChellis is eventually canned (I really think next year is NCAA or bust for him, especially with Battle being a senior and everyone else returning plus Battle’s brother joining the team), at least his successor will inherit a healthier program to work with.

But what I’ve also heard/read about JD. He didn’t exactly mesh well with his players (which explains the constant transfers that occurred), his practices were disorganized, and worst of all, his recruiting went to absolute hell.

And you’re right that JD deserves some credit for making sure the wheels stayed on during his abrupt hiring as head coach and for somehow wielding together that 2001 Sweet 16 squad. At the same time though (and I’m sure I’m not alone on this assessment) he underachieved with some fairly talented squads, the 97-98 team should’ve been in the NCAA tourney, the 98-99 team should not have had a losing record, and the 99-00 team tanked miserably in the Big Ten slate and needed a deep run in the conference tourney that year just to make it to the NIT (in fact, Dunn was on the verge of being fired before that conf tourney run and subsequent NIT run). When others are telling you about how “terrible” Dunn was, they’re probably thinking of these wasted opportunities as well as the shape he left the program in.

We’re playing Stephen Curry-less Davidson Sunday morning.