Report: Ed DeChellis Leaving For Navy

Shocking news out of State College tonight as, after making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his 8-year tenure at Penn State, David Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot-News is reporting that head basketball coach Ed DeChellis is leaving the Nittany Lions for the United States Naval Academy.

According to a well-placed source within the PSU athletic department, Penn State men's basketball coach Ed DeChellis has accepted the head coaching job at Navy. It's a real shocker but it's true. Press conference at PSU at 7 p.m. this evening.

The kicker? DeChellis has been looking for jobs for a while.

DeChellis explored options in the aftermath of the team's 2011 NCAA tournament run, its first in his 8-year run at Penn State. Two very good coaching sources told me in April that he was offered and turned down a substantially more lucrative deal at a Midwestern mid-major school but turned it down because his agent had assured him he could get an even more attractive deal at a high-major. That turned out not to be the case and DeChellis was forced to lower his sights.

Not that anyone could have seen this coming on the outside, but had we been looking for it, the signing of JUCO recruit Matt Glover in hindsight looks like a red flag. DeChellis explicitly stated at his end-of-season press conference that there was nothing worth recruiting at the JUCO level and that he didn't expect to add anyone from there. Then he signed Glover, a prospect clearly not on the level of the rest of the recruiting class. The more highly rated prospects he was chasing must have known something was up.

Obviously, this begs a ton of questions about the future. We'll hold off discussing those until after the press conference this evening. For now, though, try and process this: Ed DeChellis is gone.