Penn State tries a new direction. 'No matter what, we’re going to be aggressive' (2024)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The spacious Airbnb offered everything Mike Rhoades needed: six bedrooms, close proximity to his new home office and a quick solution to an emergent situation.

Rhoades and his staff arrived at Penn State from VCU with a roster depleted by graduation and the transfer portal and not a whole lot of time to fill it. And in true Grinchian Who-Hash, Rhoades not only brought his three assistants, video coordinator, director of player development and director of recruiting, he even brought his favorite manager, Patrick Dorney, from Richmond to State College.

Finding permanent housing for everyone didn’t even make the top 100 on their to-do list. So Rhoades scored the Airbnb, moving eight guys into the six bedrooms (three enjoyed the camp-style confines of three twin beds in one room) for what qualifies, inarguably, as the cleanest frat house in town. “We were never there,’’ says Rhoades, who happily kept his clothes in five laundry baskets for easy grab-and-go access. “I don’t think we even used the microwave or the stove.’’

The only catch: They had to be out by Aug. 30. The first Nittany Lions football game, the owner explained, is Sept. 2.

And so it begins yet again at Penn State, where not even the head basketball coach can get himself a room for a home football weekend. The university and even its fan base has long proclaimed its desire to become a player in basketball. But while football continues to flourish — the university is making plans for a multi-million dollar renovation to Beaver Stadium that many thought would lay dormant in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal — basketball searches for something that sticks.

Sometimes quite literally. In the foyer of the basketball offices, workers recently peeled off the wall art on the beams proclaiming Micah Shrewsberry’s “Gritty Not Pretty” slogan after Shrewsberry, who fashioned an NCAA Tournament second-round team in just his second season, bolted for Notre Dame. The beams now declare, “Bold. Different. Aggressive,’’ the catchphrase Rhoades has coined. He is the fifth head coach in the last 12 years (not including interim Jim Ferry) to arrive in Happy Valley convinced he can build that which has never been constructed here: a consistently successful men’s basketball team.

All have enjoyed what Rhoades calls, “pockets of success.’’ An NCAA Tournament berth, an NIT title, a glimmer of hope that is all too quickly extinguished by what traditionally has been Penn State’s mediocre reality.

Rhoades, though, believes he has the secret to sustainability, and it lies within those three words now emblazoned outside of his offices. Bold, different and aggressive isn’t just the attitude he wants his Nittany Lions to employ; it’s how he intends to play. “We want to have an identity,’’ he says. “And we want to play to our identity as much as we can. So we’re going to be bold, we’re going to be different and no matter what, we’re going to be aggressive.’’

The big question is quite simple: Will it work? The Athletic posed that question to one long-time Big Ten assistant coach, who asked not to be identified so he could be candid. He responded quickly and succinctly. “No.’’

“If you’re not sure, always favor the side of aggression. F— it and go for it.’’ It is a rainy Tuesday morning in State College, and Penn State is in its second week of workouts. Due to NCAA rules, the team splits into three groups but the workout plan is the same. Drives to the basket, quick shots, trapping and recovering — the 45 minutes goes at a frenetic pace, with Rhoades frequently jumping into a drill to demonstrate or just have some fun. “He still thinks he’s got it,’’ guard Ace Baldwin says with a smile. “He talks trash all the time, tells us he’s gonna cook us.’’ He might have a point. Rhoades was a D3 national player of the year and two-time All-American who practically willed tiny Lebanon Valley College to a national title.

Though granted a personal perpetual green light by his coach, Pat Flannery, Rhoades did not play the way he now coaches. LVC won its 1994 title against NYU, 66-59 … in overtime. In the early part of his career, as a head coach at Division III Randolph-Macon, Rhoades coached what he knew, relying on a traditional halfcourt offense, a stranglehold on play calling and zero tolerance policy for foolish mistakes.

Jamal Brunt is now the Penn State associate head coach. In 2001, he was a sophom*ore point guard at Randolph-Macon who quivered as he confessed to Rhoades that the bike the coach had lent his player was stolen because Brunt failed to lock it. He watches the coach he’s worked alongside for seven years over two different stints, the one clapping through ballhandling errors and encouraging offensive freedom and freelancing, and has a hard time trying to reconcile the two. The basics are still there. Rhoades is cut from the old-school cloth of brutal truth-telling, and earns the right to speak his peace by ensuring first his players trust him and know him. In the two weeks they’ve been on campus, the Nittany Lions have had more get-to-know-you meals with their coach than they can count.

But Rhoades pivoted his entire philosophy when, after 10 successful seasons at Randolph Macon, he took a job as Shaka Smart’s right-hand man at VCU. Havoc took the Rams and Rhoades all the way to the 2011 Final Four and a 137-46 record in his tenure. More, it gave VCU a playing style that was hard for opponents to mimic in practice, and a recognizable identity to recruit to.

But VCU is not Penn State, and the Atlantic 10 is not the Big Ten. The players are bigger, stronger, faster and already known for their own defensive success. Per KenPom, nine of the league’s teams ranked in the top 50 in defensive efficiency. Rhoades believes that because his defense will be different — trapping and pressing, more frenetic — it will be more disruptive; that by upsetting the rhythm with defense the Nittany Lions can create, efficient, quick-twitch offense.

He argues that if the Nittany Lions play a traditional style they’ll get “bludgeoned.’’ Others contend his way won’t be much better. “Guards are too good. Give up too many easy points,’’ the assistant coach says.

Rhoades gets it. None of this is news to him. Since he was hired, he’s been asked repeatedly if he’s going to play the same style, the question usually posed with a raised eyebrow and a heavy dose of skepticism. As a counterpoint, he dashes out of a conference room to grab a stack of papers stashed in his office.

Even before Rhoades brought him aboard as his assistant to the head coach and offensive coordinator, Joe Crispin started to noodle into Penn State’s history. Crispin was part of one of the Nittany Lions’ pockets of success. In 2001, his senior season, he scored 21 points to help Penn State upset North Carolina and make the Sweet 16. It remains the Lions’ modern-era NCAA Tournament high-water mark. Crispin and his brother, Jon, also a former Penn Stater and now a Big Ten analyst, often talked about Penn State’s maddening inability to sustain success. They even joked about the PSU script — play hard, and lose by five or, fall behind, mount a comeback and lose by five anyway.

Curious about the teams that rewrote that script and actually won and went to the NCAA Tournament, Joe did a little statistical analysis, trying to pinpoint the secret. “We’re the underdog,’’ he says. “And when you’re the underdog, you gotta figure out what your slingshot is.’’

When Crispin came onboard with Rhoades, he mentioned his perfunctory study to the head coach. Rhoades charged him with digging more deeply and more purposefully, asking Crispin and a few grad assistants to pore through the Lions’ statistics since 1993, when the Lions joined the Big Ten.

The results: When Penn State scored 80 or more points, it won 88.3 percent of its games. Between 70 and 79 points rendered a 65 percent win percentage. Under 70, the Lions dipped to 27.8 percent and a morbid 20 percent in the Big Ten. Which doesn’t sound like rocket science; scoring more points usually means you win more games.

But in the Big Ten, known for its more traditional halfcourt/big man-centric offense, it will be an outlier. In the last decade only seven league teams not named Iowa have averaged 80-plus points per game — Illinois in 2021; Purdue and Michigan State in 2018; Indiana and Purdue in 2017; and Indiana and Michigan State in 2016.

“I’ve seen the other story written 100 times, so why are we going to keep rewriting it?” says Crispin, who employed a high-octane offense at D3 Rowan that often topped the 90-point threshold and won 47 games in his last two seasons. “It hasn’t worked in 30 years. The best of our future is written in our past. Let’s be purposeful. Let’s go for it.”

Asked about the critics, Crispin pauses. “When was the last time the Big Ten won it all?” he says. “2000? Maybe it’s time to be different.’’

Rhoades points to a stainless steel outlet cover in his conference room. There is no outlet; just a metal cover. “Like, why is that there?” he says, sounding more like an aggrieved home makeover host than a basketball coach. “Those things are everywhere. Everything matters or nothing matters.’’ This has long been the knock on Penn State basketball — nothing mattered, at least to the people who mattered. As a native of Pennsylvania — Rhoades grew up in the small coal-mining town of Mahanoy City — Rhoades is well versed in the inequities of Penn State basketball. What he didn’t intuit as a kid growing up or as a collegiate player he learned first on the recruiting trails, where coaches gossip and trade war stories.

“I guess I was somewhat surprised he took the job,’’ says Rhoades’ assistant Jimmy Martelli, whose dad, Phil, was the long-time coach at Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia. “Growing up in this state, you always hear stuff about Penn State. How you can’t win there. But at some point the challenges are exciting for him. They’re not hurdles to overcome but goals to be met.”

Everyone before him has said the same, of course, coming in full of vigor before the reality of the places crushes it out of them. The outlet cover is silly, but to Rhoades it’s evidence of neglect from years of coaches who asked for help and were denied, or grew so weary of being rejected they simply stopped asking. But Rhoades walks into a new regime.

Athletic director Pat Kraft is entering his second year, and Neeli Bendapudi is nearing her third as university president. They have vowed action, not mere lip service, to make Penn State successful and so far, Rhoades says, they’ve delivered. He has created a punch list — four pages, double-sided, handwritten and single spaced — and also has a notebook stuffed with other long and short-term changes he wants to implement. So far, he says, Kraft and Bendapudi have delivered on what they can, greenlighting competitive staffing salaries, charter flights for recruiting and anything the staff has requested to help improve student-athlete experience.

But as much as Rhoades understands the need for some infrastructure changes, the first thing on his to-do list is winning basketball games. For which he needed players. Shredded by graduation (six players completed their eligibility) and the portal (four left), Rhoades inherited just four returning players of which sophom*ore guard Kanye Clary, who averaged 10.4 minutes per game, counted as the most experienced. “Uh, whirlwind doesn’t describe it,’’ Brunt says of the recruiting crunch to restore the roster. “It was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my coaching career.’’ All told, Penn State signed 10 players in 59 days, which sounds like a grab-and-go. It was not.

Got an Ace up our sleeve ♠️🆎 @yeah_ace3 #WeAre pic.twitter.com/NxRSN2VX7g

— Penn State Men’s Basketball (@PennStateMBB) July 10, 2023

The staff did not just want bodies to fill space; they wanted to be intentional and target players whom they believed could handle their tempo and commit to their defensive scheme but also could shoot the ball. Some were no-brainers. Baldwin, the A10 Player of the Year, and Nick Kern Jr., a 19-game starter a year ago, happily followed their coach from VCU and were obvious good fits. Rhoades and his staff recruited Qudus Wahab four times before finally convincing him to sign — once out of high school, when he went to Georgetown; two seasons later, when he transferred to Maryland; and again last season when he doubled back with the Hoyas. “Fourth time’s the charm,’’ assistant Brent Scott joked when Wahab finally agreed.

They liked Zach Hicks, a Temple transfer, because he led the Owls in 3-point shooting for two years, and Leo O’Boyle for the same reason. He connected on 40 percent of his triples last year at Lafayette. In RayQuawndis Mitchell, who starred at Kansas City, they saw a player who could blossom when he didn’t have to carry the entire load, while D’Marco Dunn struggled to get on the floor at North Carolina but once ranked as the No. 68 recruit in the nation per the 247Sports Composite.

The big get, at least by name recognition, is Puff Johnson. A blue-collar player for the Tar Heels a year ago, he was once a dangerous 3-point shooter and scorer in high school. A native of Moon Township near Pittsburgh, Johnson liked the idea of being closer to home, but when he sat down with his brother Cam, who plays for the Nets, the two talked about making a smart decision, not an emotional one. The two poured over film of all the teams recruiting Johnson out of the portal, looking for a place that suited Johnson’s strengths.

In Penn State he saw a defense that reminded him of the North Carolina he was recruited to — Roy Williams’ version. “Deny one, pass away and get in the passing lanes and be really aggressive on defense, that’s what Coach Williams hung his hat on for a lot of years,’’ Johnson says. “That’s what I committed to, so this made sense.’’ He knows what he gave up. He was at the top of the mountaintop, in the rarefied air only sniffed by the bluest of blue bloods. As he casually explains why it means a lot to be closer to home, he rattles off the Final Four run his parents attended two years ago. Penn State is trying to make back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances since 1954-55. “It’s definitely different; we’re going to be the team that’s alway hunting, not the hunted,’’ he says. “But I feel like every single player on this team, and even the coaching staff, we all feel like we’ve got something to prove.”

Slowly the herd is thinning at the Airbnb. Martelli and Brunt have moved out. A few other guys were eyeing up space. Rhoades, though, is still searching. His wife, Jodie, grew up on a farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has her eye on an old farmhouse with 101 acres — which is about 90 too many for Rhoades. “I know my lane, and Jodie knows my lane,’’ Rhoades says. He hopes maybe the neighboring farmer will want to buy up some acreage.

The family isn’t in a big hurry. Jodie, daughter Porter, and son Chase will spend this year in Richmond while Porter finishes her senior year of high school (their other son, Logan, is at Colgate).

The clock, however, is ticking on Rhoades. Football season is just around the corner.

(Photos: Courtesy of Penn State Athletics)