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pause, but there are a lot of teams having success, and we want to strive to be in that conversation with them," he said. "That's what I want to do, and that's a big part of why I came here." Shrewsberry's initial assessment sets up a showdown between competing trains of thought. Working with a finite set of resources, does Penn State's commitment to its many nonrevenue sports represent an opportunity or a burden to its men's bas- ketball program? Penn State rakes in huge television revenues every year as part of its Big Ten membership, and the men's basketball team's expenses have been a fraction of its earnings. The TV money and the huge revenues the football pro- gram generates have helped bankroll suc- cess in those other sports. But there's another way of looking at the relationship between teams in the Olympic sports and basketball, and that is to think of those other teams as indictors of what Penn State could achieve in hoops with the right coach and the necessary commitment. Barbour has shown she can create the conditions for success in un- derperforming programs. Men's soccer coach Jeff Cook is transforming PSU into one of the Big Ten's top teams, while Jeff Kampersal recently led the women's ice hockey team to a breakthrough season. Is Shrewsberry's hire the foundational in- vestment from which Penn State will similarly build men's basketball? Recounting the "hundreds of conver- sations" that went into Penn State's de- cision to hire Shrewsberry, Barbour's perspective is crystal clear. "There was no one, not one person that we talked to, who didn't believe we could achieve our stated goals," she said. "We can and will do in men's basketball at Penn State what we've done almost entirely across the board in Penn State Athletics, and that is to compete for Big Ten titles and to get to the NCAA tour- nament consistently." Penn State has now taken the prelimi- nary steps toward reaching those aspira- tions. As it looks to crest the mountain, its commitment will now be put to the test. ■ Passed over for several head coaching jobs in the past, Micah Shrewsberry appre- ciates the opportunity he's received from Penn State as its new men's basketball coach. Shrewsberry also understands the challenge of trying to lead the Nittany Lions to what director of athletics Sandy Barbour called "sustained success." They've had just five winning seasons since 2001 and four NCAA Tournament appearances since 1965. RICH SCARCELLA READING EAGLE The challenge for Shrewsberry... will be [to operate] from the standpoint of both acceptance and boundary pushing the status-quo. He will have to figure out how to make the most of his new world, one in which he is no longer at Butler, or Pur- due or working the bench with the Boston Celtics. His job will be a grind, occa- sionally thankless, sometimes underfunded and often outgunned by virtue of circumstance. It just is what it is, and to a certain extent a result of financial pragmatism more than any intentional handicapping by Barbour or her prede- cessors. BEN JONES STATECOLLEGE.COM T H E M O N T H I N . . . O P I N I O N S JOE KRENTZMAN & SON, INC. • Buyers and Brokers of Steel, Iron and Nonferrous Metals • Industrial Scrap Buyers • Container Service Available • Large Service Territory Since 1903 Lewistown, PA • Hollidaysburg, PA • DuBois, PA (800) 543-2000 • www.krentzman.net F irst i n S cra p

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