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IN RARE FORM Penn State has been an infrequent participant in the NCAA tournament, but every once in a while, like this year, the stars have aligned H I S T O R Y | ithout question, this is a his- toric season for the Penn State men's basketball team. This will be only the 10th Nittany Lion team to get into the NCAA tournament in the 82 years of the event's existence. That's an inauspicious record for any major univer- sity. What's worse for Penn State is that three of those appearances occurred in the mid-1950s, including a surprising trip to the Final Four when the tournament was radically different and only eight teams were involved. Moreover, Penn State's first tournament was in 1942 when the NCAA's postseason competition was just four years old and hardly a blip on the radar for most of the nation's sports fans. After many decades of disappointment, Nittany Lion basketball loyalists had hoped that poor record would change when Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1991. Yet, since 1992-93, their first sea- son as Big Ten members, the Lions have made only three appearances scattered over the years, and it's been nearly a decade since the most recent one in 2011. Between its Final Four appearance in 1954 and the beginning of the Big Ten era, Penn State's biggest tournament victory was in 1991, when coach Bruce Parkhill's 13th-seeded team upset fourth-seeded UCLA, 74-69, in the first round of the East Regional at Syracuse. Five years later, with assistant Jerry Dunn having taken over for the retired Parkhill, Penn State put to- gether a 21-6 record, finished second in the Big Ten and was seeded fifth in the East Regional at Providence. Alas, 13th-seeded Arkansas pulled off an 86-80 upset. Penn State didn't return to the tourna- ment until 2001, when Dunn's seventh- seeded team beat 10th-seeded Providence, 69-59, in the first round of the South Re- gional, then stunned sec- ond-seeded North Caro- lina, 82-74, in a victory even more significant than the win over UCLA 10 years earlier. The win over the Tar Heels propelled the Lions into the Sweet 16 in Atlanta, where they lost to cross- state rival Temple, an 11th seed, 84-72. Temple, the team that cost the Lions a spot in the 1953 tournament by beating them in the last game of the regular season, was back as Penn State's prime tournament nemesis. When PSU reached the tournament in 2011, the seventh-seeded Owls knocked off coach Ed DeChellis's 10th-seeded team, 66-64, in the first round of the West Regional in Tucson, Ariz. One cannot completely appreciate the W BATTLE, TESTED Talor Battle was the star of Penn State's most re- cent NCAA tour- nament team. The senior guard played all 40 min- utes and scored 23 points in the Nittany Lions' first-round loss to Temple in the 2011 tourney. Photo by Mark Selders/ Penn State Ath- letics

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