Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1543434
M A R C H 2 0 2 6 6 7 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB MATT.HERB@ON3.COM VARSITY VIEWS O ne of the worst basketball seasons in Penn State history is mercifully drawing to a close. Barring a miracle — and miracles have been in short supply lately — the PSU men will bow out at the Big Ten Tournament in Chicago, while the women will do the same in India- napolis, provided they make the 15-team field. If they don't make the field, their season will end Feb. 28 at Indiana. It's been a harsh winter for a couple of basketball programs that over the years have had to weather more than their share of hard times. Heading into the final days of their respective regular sea- sons, the Nittany Lions and Lady Lions had assembled a combined 5-28 Big Ten record. That works out to a winning per- centage of .152. Numbers like those don't leave much room for regression next season, but one of the more disheartening aspects of Penn State's recent struggles is that the road ahead looks every bit as treacherous as the gauntlet these teams have been running for the past four months. The men's program is faced with the question of whether anyone is up to the challenge of engineering a turnaround. When Mike Rhoades was hired in March 2023, it was widely understood that he was taking on a Herculean task. In Penn State, Rhoades had inherited a program with no history of sustained success, located in an area that was hard to recruit to, saddled with an arena no one really liked and forced to compete in arguably the nation's best basketball conference against better-funded rivals. Given those impediments, the consensus at the time was that patience would be required. Three years later, that patience has started to ebb, leaving Penn State with a conundrum. Rhoades has been given relatively little time to overcome the institutional dif- ficulties that have vexed pretty much all of his predecessors, along with some new issues that are unique to the NIL era. What's more, the program's ongoing problems have been compounded this year by the fact that its best player, guard Kayden Mingo, is a true freshman who's had to wear a protective mask ever since breaking his nose in practice Jan. 5. But while the sheer scale of the chal- lenge needs to be taken into account, watching Penn State's 83-72 loss to Ore- gon on Feb. 14 — a game in which the Li- ons surrendered 14 three-pointers, many of them barely contested— it was hard to come away feeling like the team was trending in the right direction. You can live with a losing record if you're build- ing toward something, but what if you're just building toward another offseason overhaul? Then what? As for the Lady Lions, their struggles have continued in Year 7 of the Carolyn Kieger coaching era. They were 3-13 in Big Ten play heading into a Feb. 25 visit from USC, dropping their conference re- cord over the past two seasons to 4-30. In contrast to the men's program, the Penn State women enjoyed quite a bit of national success before their recent mal- aise. During Rene Portland's 27 seasons, they made 11 Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights and one Final Four. When PSU jumped from the Atlantic 10 to the Big Ten, it was an immediate contender in its new league, winning the conference title two of its first three seasons. But there's a problem with using those achievements as a yardstick by which to measure Portland's successors. More than in perhaps any other sport, Big Ten expansion has shifted the balance of power in women's hoops. UCLA, USC, Maryland, Oregon and Washington have all been to at least one Elite Eight since Penn State's last NCAA Tournament ap- pearance in 2014, and all but the Trojans have been to the Final Four in that span. Most of those teams have continued to excel this year. As of mid-February, there were seven Big Ten teams in the Associ- ated Press Top 25, and another two were receiving votes. All of which is to say, the Penn State job is exponentially harder in 2026 than it was a couple of decades ago. Still, it's a results-oriented business, and Kieger heads into the final days of her seventh season with a 29-96 career Big Ten record. Has Penn State's admin- istration seen enough? We'll find out one way or another in the weeks ahead. Of course, the ultimate question for PSU, on both the men's and women's sides, is whether this year's records are attributable to the programs' leadership or to the institution itself. If it's the lat- ter — if Penn State can't muster the NIL support it needs, or pack its basketball facilities with enthusiastic fans the way it routinely does for wrestling and ice hockey, or sell a three- or four-year stay in Central PA to potential recruits — there isn't going to be a quick fix, even with new coaches on the job. Those program-building elements need to be in place. Otherwise, it's going to prove much harder to change the re- sults than to change the leadership. ■ For PSU Hoops, The Struggle Is Real Mike Rhoades has gone 17-40 in Big Ten competition since taking over the PSU men's basketball program in 2023. PHOTO BY STEVE MANUEL