Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1511150
4 0 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 3 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M M ike Rhoades' foundational mes- sage is also his simplest. Tasked with reconstructing the Penn State men's basketball program, including a comprehensive turnover in staff and player personnel, Rhodes said the larger objectives will sort themselves out. It's the day-to-day goals that he pre- fers to emphasize. The next opponent and the schedule for the future are irrelevant to what's im- mediately in front of this program. This Nittany Lion team features only three re- turning scholarship players from a squad that reached the Big Ten Tournament title game and the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season. Now, with 10 players having arrived via the transfer portal or through recruiting, the most immediate priority is to create a ground- floor culture for the program. "That's a coaching cliché, but it's a fact when you're a new coach and you're try- ing to build an identity and a culture," Rhoades said. "We have to be the hard- est-playing, the hardest-rocking team there is. We have to set that tone every day against each other. When I say win- ning the day, it is setting the tone every day of having high standards and high expectations." Penn State has spent the past seven months adhering to that approach. For the first two of those months, Rhoades and his staff constructed their roster. That meant filling 10 scholarship spots in a 59-day whirlwind. After senior point guard Adrian "Ace" Baldwin Jr. joined the Nittany Lions' ros- ter on Easter Sunday, the dominoes fell in relatively short order. One of Baldwin's Virginia Common- wealth teammates, junior wing Nick Kern, became the next to sign. Then came a deluge of new arrivals: graduate shooter Zach Hicks (Temple), senior guard Puff Johnson (North Carolina), graduate cen- ter Qudus Wahab (Georgetown), graduate shooting forward Leo O'Boyle (Lafayette), graduate combo guard RayQuawndis Mitchell (Missouri-Kansas City), soph- omore center Favour Aire (Miami, Fla.) and junior shooting guard D'Marco Dunn (North Carolina). The only freshman signee among the newcomers was Ice- landic point guard Bragi Gudmundsson. Along with the retention of sophomore guards Kanye Clary and Jameel Brown, plus sophomore strong forward Deme- trius Lilley, the Nittany Lions assembled a team. What followed was an eight-week summer session of coached workouts, capped by an international trip for a two- game exhibition in the Bahamas in Au- gust. It was a demanding, intense lead-in for the 2023-24 campaign. "These are the standards that we have to play at and we have to act upon all the time to get where we want to go," Rhoades said. "Our expectation is to put ourselves in a position to win the next game. That's always been my mental- ity. If you win the day and you take care of the next day, you start stacking some days, that's when you can become bet- ter and better. That's important to me. And then it's my job every day to help these guys become a little bit better indi- vidually and as a team. Let's have a clear understanding of how we're going to do that. Those are my expectations. "The next time we put our uniform on, we've got to find a way to win the game. I don't care who we play. That's always going to be our expectation. I don't care if we go on the road to the best teams in the country, which we will do. Find a way to win. "I've always been that way. Win the day, have high expectations and stan- dards, and fight for that every day. And then have the guys believe that on that one night and those 40 minutes. Let's do what we're capable of doing." Below is a look at the players Penn State is counting on to reach its goals, one win at a time: Backcourt Baldwin will be the straw that stirs the drink for Penn State in every respect this season. Rhoades' determination to pull the fourth-year point guard to Penn State from VCU, where he had just been named the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and De- fensive Player of the Year, made that clear from the jump. Senior point guard Ace Baldwin Jr. will be the centerpiece of Penn State's team this season. He is coming off a junior campaign at Virginia Commonwealth in which he won Atlantic 10 Player of the Year honors. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL ROUNDBALL RESTART Coach Mike Rhoades focuses on building a winning culture in his first season with the Nittany Lions NAT E BAU E R | N AT E . B A U E R @ O N 3 . C O M