It really pains me to write this article. And it’s probably in frustration and a rash opinion attributed to the frustration of yet another painful loss–and to an Iowa Hawkeye team that came in at 6-11 (0-4) with losses to such powerhouses as Northern Iowa and UT-San Antonio, but right now, I can’t see any reason why Ed DeChellis should continue to be the head coach of the Penn State basketball team.

Last year’s NIT run was magnificent.  It was pure unadulterated fun for a program that hasn’t much to root for in the past few years.  It brought meaningful basketball back to Penn State for the first team in nearly a decade, it renewed interest among students in a team that we wanted to care about, but just couldn’t bring ourselves to suffer through the pain of watching a Big Ten bottom dweller year-in and year-out.  Last year, Ed DeChellis seemed like Penn State’s savior.

He was the Big Ten coach of the year, and even though Penn State didn’t make the NCAA tournament, we knew we were moving in the right direction.  We had a legitimate superstar in Talor Battle, we had young guys who looked like difference makers.  We even had a good recruiting class coming in, with a point guard rated by some as the best in Texas.

But all of that goodwill has come and gone in the first 17 games of this season.  We’ve seen a team that thought they’d compete for an NCAA bid lose to mid-major cellar dwellers like UNC-Wilmington and Tulane, we’ve seen a team that’s used to pulling off miracle wins lose in the final minutes to Temple and Virginia Tech, and we’ve seen a team that so desperately needed to distance itself from the Big Ten basement start its conference schedule at a putrid 0-5, losing every game in painful fashion.  We knew we would struggle this year, but not this much.  This much is wholly unacceptable.

It’s not Ed DeChellis’s fault that Jamelle Cornley and Stanley Pringle left, creating a giant void in Penn State’s starting lineup.  But it is his fault that the development of every player on this team, sans Battle, has been nonexistent.  Jeff Brooks is still the same enigma he was the day he first stepped foot in the BJC.  Andrew Jones, who played so well down the stretch last year and into the NIT has taken a major step back–he’s been less assertive, less aggressive, and worse on the defensive end and as a rebounder.  And that problem of getting into early foul trouble hasn’t gotten any better, either.  Need I go on?  We haven’t seen much improvement from D.J. Jackson, from Chris Babb, from Andrew Ott.

And it doesn’t seem like the future’s much brighter.  Sure, Frazier’s shown glimpses of the talent that had him so highly recruited, but Bill Edwards doesn’t realize he’s no longer in high school, that he’s not the best player on the court.  Sasa Borovnjak certainly doesn’t look like someone who will contribute down the line, and aside from Taran Buie–and let’s not consider that a DeChellis coup, since he would’ve followed his half-brother anywhere–Penn State’s other commits haven’t exactly been pulling in offers from the best teams around.  Trey Burke committed to Penn State over a host of mid-majors, and not even good ones. Beating out the likes of Akron, Cleveland State, and James Madison isn’t an accomplishment.  Peter Alexis doesn’t have a single other offer.  I don’t know about Ed, but nobody else in the Big Ten seems to think these guys are big time players.

Ed DeChellis got lucky when he brought in Talor Battle. There’s no reason for a superstar of his caliber to come to play for Penn State, and it’s not fair that he’s been stuck here amidst middling mediocrity.  Jamelle Cornley was a warrior, and he had the heart and determination that few could ever match.  But he was perhaps emblematic of Penn State’s success–he was undersized, fairly unathletic, but succeeded in spite of that, overcoming his own physical limitations through pure guts.

You can’t recruit guts, but you can recruit talent, and that’s something Ed has failed to do.  You can instill in your players a sense of pride, and that’s something Ed has failed to do.  Nobody on that team, aside from Talor Battle, wants to touch the ball.  Nobody on that team, aside from Talor Battle, wants to shoot.  Nobody on that team, aside from Talor Battle, would be starting for any other power conference in the country.  Penn State is the only major-conference team with just one double-digit scorer.

We all thought the NIT Championship was a step in the right direction for Penn State.  We thought it was a stepping stone for future greatness, to the NCAA Championship, back to the Sweet Sixteen.  Who knows, maybe we’d be competing for a Big Ten championship one year.

But the fact is that it was just a blip on a landscape of suck, not just for Penn State basketball, but for Ed DeChellis.  When he inherited it from Jerry Dunn, this team was as bad as it could ever be, but after 8 years, your predecessor’s failures are no longer an excuse.  It’s a shame, because you can tell just how much a good team means to DeChellis–as an alumni of the school, as someone who probably always dreamed of coaching this team.

But even he wouldn’t have dreamt of someone who’s struggled so mightily to develop a personality for his teams.  It’s been an identity crisis for the Lions since the day he got here–on one hand, you have a team that supposedly wants to run the ball, on the other, a team that spends 33 seconds of the shot clock before jacking up an off-balance three.  On one hand, you’ve got a pressuring defense, that creates turnovers and opportunities, and on the other, the world’s weakest zone.  You’ve got a team that will look like world-beaters for 10 minute spurts, and then get outhustled, outenergied, and outplayed on their way to collapsing mightily down the stretch.

It’s not all Ed DeChellis’s fault. To say that would be remarkably disingenuous.  Ed’s giving it his all, and if he had the players who could succeed on their own, we wouldn’t be in this predicament.

But right now, Penn State is 8-9, with an 0-5 conference mark.  Any dreams of the NIT are just about dead.  This team more closely resembles Ed’s 11-19 team of 2007, or the 9-19 team in 2004.  And, as is quite obvious, this season is far more resembling of Ed DeChellis’s career than last year.

I’m sorry, Ed, but a 29-76 mark in conference isn’t getting it done.  You’ve had 8 years now to find something that works, and you simply haven’t.  When Penn State has succeeded, it’s been in spite of you, not because.  It’s been your reluctance to use set plays, to abandon a zone that clearly isn’t working, to refuse to tinker with the lineup that’s been the root of such failure.

Ed deserves some credit, though.  Right now, Penn State has some of the best facilities in the country, and any coach who inherits them immediately has a recruiting chip.  Ed put the taste of success into the students, and we’re eager to get that back.  Taran Buie should be here for four years, and everyone seems to think he’ll be just as good as his brother.  And let’s not look over the remarkable work Ed has done with his philanthropies, especially Coaches vs. Cancer, let’s not forget his own determination in overcoming a battle with cancer.

But frankly, success on the court should be the only barometer determining a coach’s future–not just at Penn State, which so sorely needs it, but at any school.  There are plenty of deserving young candidates at mid-major schools from the CAA and MVC, like Hofstra’s Tom Pecora, or Dana Altman, at Creighton, to name a few.  Brian Gregory’s excelled at Drexel, and has Big Ten ties–he was an assistant at Michigan State.  Maybe Lon Kruger would want to re-join the coaching ranks at a power conference.  I don’t know who the next coach at Penn State should be, but after going out and getting Cael Sanderson, the administration has shown that they’re willing to pay whatever it takes to get their man.

I’m sorry Ed, but it’s time to go.

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