This is Part 1 of a three-part basketball preview here at NittanyWhiteOut. Stay tuned for the second and third installments, which will be posted before Friday’s season-opener against Penn.

Penn State has zero chance of reaching the NCAA tournament this year.

Yes, I’m well aware of the absurdity of that comment. This is a Penn State team that won 27 games last year, the most in the program’s history.  The Lions were 10-8 in conference games last year, again, a Penn State record. And yes, Penn State capped off a memorable season with their first ever NIT Championship.  Ed DeChellis just got himself a well-earned contract extension, and the momentum is definitely taking the Nittany Lions in the right direction.

But all anyone is talking about this season is how much they’ll lose from that fantastic season of a year ago, and that’s with good reason.

Gone is Jamelle Cornley, the unquestioned emotional leader of this team.  And yet to call him that does a disservice to his on-the-court play, which reached new highs in 2008-09.  Always a bully under the basket, Cornley added a shooting dimension, chipping in a .380 percentage from behind the arc, to go along with a never-say-die attitude and the heart of a lion.  Gone, too, is Stanley Pringle, who blossomed from a library masturbator who also played basketball to perhaps the Big Ten’s best shooter, knocking down 45% of his three point attempts en route to a 13-point per game season.  Perhaps most importantly, Pringle was another competent point guard, and could spell Talor Battle.  So too has Danny Morrissey departed, and though much maligned he was, Morrissey was a more than competent pure shooter and 6th man off the bench.

Are you going to tell me that a team that averaged just 67 points per game is not going to miss the 32.5 per that those three combined to average?  Those left on the team will have to virtually double their scoring averages from a year ago just to match their output from last season.  And while some players, like Chris Babb, have the potential to do just that, the fact of the matter is that squeezing 10 points per game from the likes of David Jackson and Jeff Brooks, each of whom looked lost at times during the season of a year ago, is like getting water from a rock.  And though we may rave about Sasa Borovnjak and Tim Frazier, can we trust the true freshmen to pitch in on a regular basis?

Let’s not forget that Penn State was an uncommonly fortunate team last year, as so many “teams of destiny” seem to be.  If Talor Battle doesn’t hit a miracle lay up, twisting his way through the Illinois defense, the 2008-09 season isn’t a memorable one. If he doesn’t connect on a desperation three at the buzzer against George Mason, the incredible NIT run never happens.  Hell, in three of their biggest wins, both Illinois games, and the Michigan State game, Penn State managed to claw their way out of double-digit deficits.  It led Basketball Prospectus, one of the foremost authorities on the hoops world, to start referring to a team’s luck at winning close games as the “DeChellis factor,” going as far to say:

The Nittany Lions actually lost a close game (!) Saturday at Iowa. It looked very strange. I didn’t know that was possible.

Sure, some of that is coaching, and players coming through in the clutch. But when there’s a team like Penn State that just kept coming through with wins they had no right earning, well, it’s not a stretch to call them a team that got lucky on more than one occasion last year.

Let’s not forget that Penn State is one of just a tiny handful of teams in the Big Ten that doesn’t improve from last year to this one.  No team in the conference, save for Iowa, lost as much as Penn State, in scoring, and in value to the program, and it seems that the other schools stocked up. Indiana, under Tom Crean, continues to bring in monster recruiting classes, and so too did schools like Minnesota and Illinois.  Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State all bring back the majority of their starting lineups, and Northwestern even presents a challenge, with Kevin Coble returning and looking to build off what was, for them, a fantastic season. Many of these are programs that can restock from a year ago. Penn State will need to rebuild.

Ed DeChellis is acutely aware of this variable.  At the Big Ten media day in Chicago, DeChellis said the following:

“Moving up, you kind of look at it in the spring and summer, ‘OK, who are we going to jump over?’ You could be an 8-10 team in this league this year and be very, very good.”

If Penn State couldn’t make it to the NCAA tournament last year, when they managed a 10-8 conference record with wins over 4 ranked teams in conference play, then how will they do it this season, when the conference is even stronger, and attaining those 4 wins will be even more difficult?  Even Penn State’s conference schedule is a detriment, as they only face Indiana and Iowa, the only teams ranked lower than the Lions were in the preseason media poll, one time each.

And though the non-conference schedule actually features a number of opponents with a pulse, there won’t be a single chance to beat a ranked team.  While victories over the likes of Virginia Tech, Miami, and Temple would be an upgrade over wins over NJIT, Hartford, and William and Mary, the fact is that they’re not marquis wins that you can brag about. And with what is sure to be a difficult conference slate ahead, it would’ve been nice to have the chance, at least, to beat a couple of ranked teams during the pre-conference schedule.

Next year, when Talor Battle is a senior and his supporting cast has an extra year of experience and Taran Buie, perhaps the best recruit the Nittany Lions have ever landed, steps onto the court on the BJC, Penn State will be poised to make a run at the NCAA tournament.

But for my money, they missed their chance last year.

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1. The Glass is Half Full
2. Ed DeChellis Signs Contract Extension
3. Well, Taran Buie’s Starting Now: Chris Babb Transfers
4. I’ll Let the Beastie Boys Recap This One:
5. Sorry, Ed, but it’s time for a change