Oh yes, there is that Pitt fella…Quick! Put a banner up! “Pitt Made it to the NCAA Tournament, Penn State didn’t -2008-09”

I think you’ll find the general consensus among PSU fans is that we’ll play Pitt in football, basketball, horseshoes, or checkers.

Anyt ime. Any place. Any sport. We’re just as frustrated with our administration for not making it happen as you are. But Pitt has to make some concessions as well.

And so this thread goes down the rabbit hole into 200 comments about Pitt.

Hows is PSU basketball relevant to Pitt? Have fun because in another month all eyes will be on football and no one will care about you anymore.

If wikipedia is a good source-

Pitt- One Final Four (‘41), One Elite Eight (’74)
PSU- One Final Four (‘54), One Elite Eight (’42)

So, try winning something this time around instead of losing to Bradley or something.

It’s PItt that cancelled teh basketball series and some sort of pathetic retribution for the football thing. [sigh] Whatever.

This place is so troll free that I’m not too worried about it. If the bball team can get two solid years in a row it will go a long way to recruiting and keeping interest. The problem with the last two good teams was that they were senior laden teams so the next years sucked. Attendance will always be a year behind and hopefully recruiting picks up too.

I was so close to linking to 48-14.

They’ve been to the Final Four more recently.

Wow, that hurts to type.

It’s just the way it is.

(And, yes, I am trying to jinx Pitt.)

In the minds of the NIT selection committee

PSU was out when nobody teams like Miss State won their conference tournament. Hell, St. Mary’s was left out and had 26 wins! This happens EVERY season to several schools and this year, PSU was one. I don’t blame the schedule as much when you look historically at PSU basketball. They scheduled to how they felt the team would perform. I don’t know of ANYONE who thought PSU would finish with 22 wins.

I went to every bball game when I was at Penn State but haven’t followed them too closely since then. This year got me hooked again and hopefully it did that to alot more people too. Enough that the program gets some momentum and recognition and decent recruits from it.

I didn’t even really follow them back in 2000-2001 when they made it to the Sweet 16 (just watched a few of the “big” games when friends decided to watch).

This year was a perfect storm, though, of (in relative order of importance) 1) getting the BTN and actually being able to watch more than 2 games a year on TV, 2) me joining BSD and having a community to “watch” the games with and 3) the team actually being good.

I’m sure I qualify as a “bandwagon” fan, but I actually did watch the OOC games (before it was really that clear that they were gonna be good). I didn’t watch every game (I just don’t have the time during the week to watch that many games) but I made an effort to watch all the “important” games, as well as any other game that was on if I was home. With that said, I will probably watch next year, even if they don’t do as well, just because the seeds were planted.

Never went to a single game as a student. I couldn’t have cared less. But this year was fun and I’ll be keeping an eye on them for at least next year and probably the year after. But if they fall back into obscurity there’s a chance I go back to not caring. Sorry, just not that big of a basketball fan really so its an honset possibility.

But for some reason, I’m using the “Canada On Strike!” music in my head.

I almost wanted to leave the “I” out of it, but it seems to be more versatile that way.

Suppose the team played three more quality non-con games and lost them. We’d still be out, and likely not as close to in as we assumed that we were. Temple and Rhode Island were fringe tourney teams at best, and they both beat us earlier in the season. I see no reason to assume we would have done much better against anybody else.

Allow me to paraphrase Ben Franklin; ’Tis better to play bad teams and be thought shitty than to play good teams and remove all doubt.

That was supposed to be “DeChellis probably wasn’t going to be fired if he got the same results in 08-09, but he was in danger, so…”

To a man, every single player and coach said in the preseason that their goal was to go to the NCAA tournament this year. If that’s the case, then you have to schedule better competition. We don’t have to put UConn, Duke, and UNC on the schedule. But our usual run through the Patriot League isn’t going to cut it anymore.

You need three or four respectable non-conference wins to go to the tournament. You can’t do that if they’re not even on the schedule.

was generally despised, by all accounts Ed is generally well liked.

He’ll end up getting a contract extension after this season.

I am firmly NOT on the fire Ed bandwagon. No way. Though it’s disappointing we didn’t make the tournament, we did make the NIT which is still progress. Last year we had 15 wins. We picked up seven more wins with a nearly identical schedule and no Geary Claxton. Progress is being made. Maybe not as fast as some people would like, but we’re not Indiana. We can’t go out and recruit McDonalds All Americans just because we’re Penn State and turn things around in year two.

As long as we keep bringing in decent recruits I’m satisfied. We could fire Ed, but who’s to say we wouldn’t turn around and hire another Jerry Dunn?

and then Jerry Dunn promptly ran the program into the ground. The bench is about 270183740187x deeper than what Dunn gave ED.

We’ll set one up. Unfortunately I won’t get around to setting it up until tonight. But I think you can still go in and make your picks and join the group later after I set it up.

http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2009/3/16/798947/black-shoe-diaries-bracket

I thought we played pretty well on Friday night. Purdue was just shooting the lights out. Even the Purdue bloggers will tell you that was the best shooting game they had seen the Boilers play all season. Nobody could have beaten Purdue last Friday. Sometimes it’s just not your night, but it doesn’t mean you suck.

Progress is being made. Good progress. If you ask me if I would rather have a 2001 type run to the sweet 16, but have nothing coming back the follow year or have this team just barely miss the tournament with a bunch of young talent and promise for the future, give me this team any day.

Even if reading rambler posts 50 of the comments, it’s still impressive.

Ha!

and Brooks and Jackson seemed to have improved as well. Not an expert, but it seems one of them might be able to step up next year, and Babb can hopefully replace Pringle.

Only time will tell.

I don’t think anyone is saying we’re deep. In fact, I’ve been pointing out all season that playing Battle and Cornley 35+ minutes every night was killing us.

Even though we’re losing two players, we are very young. Next year we won’t have a single senior on the team. Battle, Jones, Jackson, and Brooks will all be juniors. I think Chris Babb will be an adequate replacement for Pringle. You can’t replace Cornley’s heart, but we should be able to replace his 15 ppg and 5 rpg when other guys get his minutes and shots.

Will we be as good as this year? No. Nobody is saying that. We have some good recruits coming in with Frazier, Sasa, and and Marshall. We seem to be the leader for Battle’s little brother who is a major recruit. I just don’t see any justification for firing Ed at this time.

Penn State is never, NEVER going to be the kind of place that can do what Indiana is currently doing with their recruiting class. The manner in which ED is building the program is really the only option. Slowly. Get a little better, recruit some better talent, get a little better, recruit some better talent. Inches at a time.