Blue White Illustrated

season, Egli had the Lions back in the NCAA tournament but they lost in the Eastern Regional semifinals, and they didn't return unitl 1965, losing again in the first game. Since then, Penn State has been to only four NCAA tourna- ments, reaching the Sweet 16 in 2001. Basketball has changed immensely at Penn State over the past seven decades, and not just in the style, rules and cul- ture of the game itself. In the Lawther, Gross and Egli eras, coaches also were full-time faculty members who taught physical education classes. That changed in the late 1970s, around the same time that scholarship rosters ex- panded to 10 players. When athletic director Ernie McCoy announced on Feb. 22, 1968, that Egli would step down at the end of the sea- son to become the supervisor of Penn State's 18 commonwealth campuses, he said John Bach, the head coach at Ford- ham for 18 years, was the leading candi- date to take over the program. McCoy also mentioned Daly, then an assistant at Duke, as another of "many candidates." McCoy's words were a smoke screen, because Bach apparently had already ac- cepted the position. Daly's connection with Penn State is intriguing. He succeeded Dick Harter at Penn in 1971-72 when Harter left for Oregon, seven years before Harter re- placed Bach at Penn State. When Harter departed Penn State after the 1982-83 season, Daly hired him as an assistant with the NBA's Detroit Pistons. The well-respected Bach appeared to be the perfect fit for the Nittany Lions, with a 265-193 record at his alma mater during the height and eventual de-em- phasis of New York collegiate basketball after the gambling scandals of the 1950s. He also had known football coach Joe Paterno from their days growing up in Brooklyn. Paterno may have helped in- fluence Bach's hiring, but the choice was McCoy's. "We're looking for a teacher, a coach who teaches the fundamentals," McCoy said when announcing Egli's departure. "In recruiting he would have to find the proper type of student-athlete who un- derstands our philosophy – no-non- sense, with everything done within the rules." That basic credo continues to this day. Bach couldn't get Penn State to the next level, but after leaving the universi- ty in 1978 in what has been described as a mutual agreement, he became renowned as one of the all-time great assistant coaches in the NBA. He died in January at age 91 in Chicago, where he had a hand in three league champi- onships as a member of the Bulls' staff. "Before the 1970s, basketball wasn't a big deal at Penn State," recalled John Coyle, now a business professor emeri- tus who started his long tenure as Penn State's faculty representative for athlet- ics in July 1970. "That all changed when Bob Scannell became the dean of the College of Health, Physical Education and Recreation [succeeding McCoy]. They made the athletic director a sepa- rate position reporting to the dean and promoted Ed Czekaj to athletic director. "At that time, basketball at some of the schools known for football, including the Big Ten and Southeastern Confer- ence, saw basketball as an opportunity to generate additional revenue and also to attract students to your school. By the end of the '70s, basketball was quite im- portant to all these schools. So, when John Bach left Penn State, Bob Scannell made it known he wanted to attract a top-level type of person who could de- velop our basketball program and bring it to a higher level than John could do." Scannell set up an advisory search committee for the first time. The com- mittee included Czekaj, Coyle, Della Du- rant (the top women's administrator) and a few others. Paterno was not an of- ficial member of the committee, but as always, he had influence. "We had a lot of names," Coyle said, "and one of the names was Coach K [Mike Krzyzewski], who was the head coach at Army at the time. No one knew much about him, but he came highly recommended." Krzyzewski was a disciple of Knight, first as a West Point cadet playing for Knight (1966-69) and then as an assis- tant coach at Indiana (1974-75) before becoming Army's head coach. Knight had once yearned to become the head coach at Penn State, as he recalled in his 2002 autobiography, "Knight: My Sto- ry." "The position opened after my third year as Army's coach, and I was inter- ested," Knight wrote. As Paterno often told the story later, he asked for an as- sessment of Knight from Pete Newell, one of college basketball's coaching gu- rus at the time and also a Hall of Famer. Newell didn't think Knight was ready. "I hadn't yet met Pete Newell," Knight wrote, "and he recommended John Bach." Of course, Krzyzewski didn't get the job, either. Nor did Valvano, who was at Iona at the time and who would go on to become an iconic sports figure after delivering an inspirational speech at an ESPN awards show in 1993 as he was dy- ing of bone cancer. "Jimmy came in for an interview and it was an enjoyable experience," Coyle re- called. "He was a funny guy and easy to talk to. He came into the room looking like a New York City guy. He had this cashmere sports coat and a leather over- coat that fit down to your knees that had a sash instead of buttons and a hat. At one point, he asked, 'If I get this job, do I have to dress like Paterno?' And that cracked everybody up." As Coyle recalled, the goal of the com- mittee was "to find a longstanding assis- tant or associate head coach who was in a real established program or attract some head coach who had been success- ful." Two such coaches were at the fore- front: Bill Guthridge, a longtime assis- tant with six years at his alma mater, Kansas State, and 11 years under future Hall of Famer Dean Smith at North Car- olina; and Harter, a Pottstown, Pa., na- tive and Penn graduate with a 216-135 record and appearances in two NCAA tournaments and three NITs in a 13-year head coaching career at Rider, Penn and Oregon. "Guthridge made a real good impres- sion on the committee with his knowl- edge of the game and his experience. He was highly recommended, and I was

• Cover