Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1315054
sonally… I went to [visit] Penn State, and it was one of those moments in life. I just knew it was the right place for me. … In an intuitive sense, I had my epiphany here at Penn State College." Engle was making a conscious effort to re- cruit African American athletes. Penn State had de-emphasized athletics in 1929 and did not begin to award scholarships again until the 1949 season. Early on, Engle brought in little- known Earl Mundel and four young men who would become famous on or off the field: Arnelle, Lenny Moore, Rosey Grier and Charlie Blockson. Playing basketball was not even mentioned by Engle and Paterno when they were recruiting Ar- nelle. As Arnelle told me, at the end of his freshman football season after the tradi- tional Pitt game on Nov. 24, 1951, Penn State's head basketball coach, Elmer Gross, asked Engle if he would allow Ar- nelle to play basketball. Engle said yes, and Gross surprised Arnelle with an im- promptu tryout at Rec Hall in a one-on- one game against John Egli. Arnelle didn't know it at the time, but Egli was one of Gross's assistant coaches. When the basketball team opened its season on Dec. 5 at Rec Hall, Arnelle was in the starting lineup. The co-captain of the team was Hardy Williams of Philadelphia who was Penn State's first African American player when he walked on as a freshman prior to the start of the 1948-49 season. Arnelle was an instant star, averaging 18.9 points per game, as Gross's 1951-52 squad made it into the NCAA tournament for the first time in Penn State's history before los- ing its initial game to No. 1 Kentucky, 82-54. The greatest of all time Even with his success in basketball as a freshman, few could have predicted what Arnelle would accomplish. His basketball achievements are too nu- merous to mention here. The Penn State media guide sums everything up perfectly: "Jesse Arnelle holds the mantle of the greatest Nittany Lion basketball player of all time." He still holds most of the team's single-season and career scoring records, although Talor Battle broke his career record near the end of the 2011 season. Arnelle con- tinues to own the Lions' career, single- season and single-game rebounding records. He received only honorable mention All-America recognition from the two prestigious wire services, the AP and UPI. However, in that era, the Los An- geles-based Helms Foundation's All- America basketball and football teams CHANGE IN PLANS Consid- ered one of the top ends in the country, Arnelle had orig- inally been set to attend Brown but opted instead to follow Paterno to Penn State. File photo