Penn State's Basketball Season Is Officially Over

Sporting a 16-16 overall and 7-11 record in Big Ten play, questions arose as to whether the Penn State basketball team would end up accepting an invite for any type of non-NCAA tournament postseason play. With the NIT being a long shot at best, the likely options were either the CBI (which PSU had previously played in 2014) or the newly-formed Vegas 16 tournament out in Las Vegas. According to an official athletic department press release however, Pat Chambers announced that his team will not pursue any postseason tournament opportunities, officially bringing the season to a close.

This season can already be considered a success by most fans, due to the sheer fact that nobody in their right mind expected anything other than a sub-.500 overall record, let alone performing well enough in conference play to avoid being amongst the bottom four teams forced to play in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament. While an appearance in a postseason event would be icing on the cake for this squad, Pat probably realizes that any non-NCAA or NIT tournament would be relatively pointless, given that his team's makeup is going to look drastically different next season with the departures of Brandon Taylor, Jordan Dickerson, Donovon Jack, and Devin Foster, along with Tony Carr, Lamar Stevens, and the rest of the freshmen cavalry arriving in Happy Valley this Summer, as well as Terrence Samuel and Mike Watkins becoming available for use.

While the prospect of running the table in a lesser tournament would seem enticing, there's also the flip side which is suffering an early exit, which is exactly what happened to PSU the last time they played in such a tournament by losing a sloppy game to Siena in the second round of the CBI. By ending its season now at 16-16 overall, the program can claim consecutive non-losing seasons for the first time since 2000-2001 (that's the NIT Final Four and NCAA Sweet 16 appearances, respectively). Thus, it's probably best for all parties involved to just tie a bow on the 2015-16 season and giddily look ahead to 7-8 months from now.