It was 1970, and Joe Paterno was hot on the heels of another Penn State recruit. Not a thick-necked football player, but an angular basketball star:
Tom McMillen, everybody`s All-America, a player so accomplished on the court and in the classroom that he was to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated before leaving Mansfield (Pa.) High School.
McMillen was special. Anybody could see that. He was a 6-foot-11-inch kid who could shoot and rebound, the nation`s consensus high school player of the year. That he later would become a Rhodes scholar and a U.S. congressman surprised no one. Tom McMillen was the perfect guy to breathe some air into a deflated Penn State basketball program.
No one could sell Penn State better than Joe Paterno. He showed up on McMillen`s doorstep and made this plea, according to Jim Tarman, who is now Penn State`s athletic director: ”If you came to Penn State, you may sacrifice yourself for a while, but you`d be the guy who opened doors for others. And for generations and generations, you`d be one of the all-time heroes.”
For his own good reasons, McMillen chose Maryland. Penn State settled for thanks, but no thanks. And it has settled for polite rejection ever since. All the blue-chip Pennsylvania schoolboys who should have felt the magnet`s pull of Penn State have gone elsewhere. Sam Bowie of Lebanon went to Kentucky. Jeff Lebo of Carlisle and Dave Popson of Wilkes-Barre chose North Carolina. Billy Owens of Carlisle picked Syracuse.
While most of its big-time football counterparts-the Oklahomas, the Alabamas, the Syracuses, the West Virginias, the Marylands-have built high-rise basketball traditions (granted, Maryland`s has cracked lately), Penn State is still trying to lay a solid foundation. It has not been to the NCAA tournament in 24 years. It has not produced a basketball All-America since 1954. It has won 20 games in a season only twice.
”It`s not that they have a bad basketball reputation,” said the estimable high school coach Dave Lebo, who has taken a sabbatical from Carlisle High to watch his son, Jeff, play his senior season at North Carolina. ”They just don`t have a basketball reputation.”
Bruce Parkhill is in his sixth season as Penn State`s basketball coach. He has tossed out one five-year plan and started another. The Nittany Lions are 8-6 this season, and Parkhill is patient and determined. An NIT bid is possible, but the coach is realistic enough to know that an NCAA bid won`t arrive in the mail unless Penn State steals the Atlantic 10 tournament.
In fact, given the lack of tradition, problems of geography and environment, ancient facilities, tough admission standards and other obstacles, it is not reasonable to assume that Penn State`s perennial top 20 aspirations in football will transfer to basketball anytime soon. Or maybe ever. For now, the Nittany Lions must concern themselves with becoming a power in the Atlantic 10, challenging the emergence of Temple and the constancy of West Virginia.
”We aspire to be as good as we can be,” said Tarman, the athletic director. ”Our goal is the Final Four, but we`ve got a lot of stepsto accomplish before that. Our goals are, No. 1, to be competitive, No. 2, to win the conference, and that leads to our third goal, the top 10. We`re trying to make the commitment, but we`re not going to cut corners to get it done. Maybe it takes longer to do it that way.
”It`s foolish to say we aspire every year to be national champion. There`s no basis of great success to build those aspirations on. But we think we`ve made the commitment to strive for the conference championship and get in the postseason. Whatever happens after that takes care of itself.”
There are plenty of reasons Penn State basketball has no fecund heritage. Here are some of the most-often discussed:
– Lack of tradition-Penn State reached the Final Four in 1954, led by All-America center Jesse Arnelle. The Nittany Lions finished third, losing to eventual champion La Salle in the semifinals and defeating Southern California in the consolation game. Penn State last appeared in the NCAA tournament in 1965, losing to Bill Bradley`s Princeton team 60-58 in overtime at the Palestra.
Since then, all the Nittany Lions have to show for postseason play are first-round losses in the NIT in 1966 and 1980. That 1980 team was coached by Dick Harter, who seemed to be the guy who would turn things around. He won at least 17 games three times in his five seasons at State College, but he grew frustrated and departed in 1983 after a stormy tenure. He now coaches the NBA`s Charlotte Hornets expansion team.
”I have nothing to say,” is all that Harter will say about Penn State.
Parkhill inherited the job from Harter, and everyone seems to think he is the right man for the job. But he is caught in a vicious circle. Penn State lacks tradition, so blue-chip players go elsewhere. Because they go elsewhere, Penn State can`t build a tradition. Let`s face it. The only two former Penn State players with any kind of name recognition are Bob Weiss, who played and coached in the NBA, and Frank Brickowski, currently a journeyman center-forward for the San Antonio Spurs. That`s not exactly a heavy drawing card.
Take the case of Sam Bowie. There was much pressure for him to remain in Pennsylvania when he graduated from Lebanon High in 1979. His high school coach wanted him to attend Penn State. His girlfriend, whom he later married, wanted him to attend Penn State. She went to Penn State. Bowie chose Kentucky. ”Penn State was very considerate when it came to sending letters and making contacts,” Bowie said. ”I was probably a guy who could have done some good and helped give them some recognition. But at Kentucky, I had a chance to play on NBC, ABC and CBS every week and get a lot of exposure.”
– Geography-Many people think the biggest drawback to Penn State`s basketball success is its relative isolation in Happy Valley. First, it is removed from the media centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Second, it is not inherently a basketball area. Third, State College is not a place that attracts many blacks as students, much less athletes, particularly inner-city basketball players. Of the 37,175 students on campus, only 1,463 are black.
Wes Jones, a graduate assistant and former Penn State player, is one of the few inner-city blacks to have taken a chance on Nittany Lions basketball. He is from Queens. When he made the team as a walk-on in 1986, he remembers, there were only four blacks on the team. Parkhill is working hard to change that. He has eight black players on the active roster this season, and two blacks who are redshirt freshmen.
”It was kind of hard at first,” Jones said. ”You`re constantly on the go, used to things being open 24 hours a day. All of a sudden, everything closes at 12. I`m having trouble getting a haircut. But the black community there is so close-knit. You feel like one big family.
”Before, a lot of inner-city kids were reluctant even to go take a look. Now, since the program is on the way up, they say, `Okay, I`ll come take a visit.` Once they do come take a visit, they enjoy the university. It`s a college-town atmosphere. . . . But what you find is, as TV exposure increases, more and more blacks will go there who are better athletes.”
– Football-factory stigma-The Nittany Lions say that Billy Owens, the Carlisle star now at Syracuse, was unrecruitable because of his grades. But, the truth is, Owens had no interest in Penn State anyway.
”It`s just a football program,” he said.
This season`s top recruit, freshman guard Freddie Barnes, heard the same thing down in Greensboro, N.C.
”Why you going to a football school?” his friends wanted to know.
Wes Jones, Parkhill`s graduate assistant, thinks the football-factory stigma is Penn State`s toughest hurdle.
”If they can overcome the impression that basketball is looked down upon, if they can convince the kids that they`re cared for, they`re important, they mean a lot to the students and the faculty, if they can overcome that, they`ll have a big-time program in a couple of years,” Jones said.
The underlying assumption by many people is that Joe Paterno doesn`t want the competition from basketball. It is an assumption that everyone at Penn State aggressively denies, one that makes Paterno furious.
Granted, Tarman said, before Harter arrived in 1979, the commitment to basketball was lacking. ”In all fairness,” he said, ”there wasn`t that kind of commitment to previous people.”
But, simply from a financial standpoint, Paterno would be foolish not to want a successful, money-making basketball program today. As it stands, funding from football carries all 28 sports on campus. The load is heavy. Just last season, the Nittany Lions announced plans to discontinue the longstanding Syracuse football rivalry in order to get an extra home game (and $1 million payday) on the schedule.
”I love basketball,” Paterno said. ”I played basketball in college. I almost went to Fordham on a partial basketball scholarship. At Brown, Weeb Ewbank coached me in basketball as a freshman. When I was a kid (in Brooklyn), I played from 8 in the morning till 6 at night in the playground. My mom packed me a lunch.
”I`ve done everything I can to help basketball here. I`ve been in a car with Dick Harter at 1 in the morning chasing kids in the winter. It drives me nuts that we`re not better, but I don`t want us to cut corners to get good. We`ve given Bruce a tough job-not to cheat, not to bring in kids who don`t belong at Penn State. When you read about what happens at other places, like Memphis State . . . we`re trying to do it our way. It`s not easy.”
Parkhill has heard that Paterno doesn`t want competition. But he said he doesn`t believe it.
”In all honesty, from all the dealings I`ve had with Joe, he`s been totally supportive,” Parkhill said. ”That`s all I can go by. I really believe him when he says he wants to help us and that he loves basketball.”
One thing Parkhill has discovered is this: The farther you recruit from Penn State, the less the football stigma matters. Only two players on the current roster are from Pennsylvania. Three are from Virginia, three from Maryland, and two each from Colorado and Florida.
”Those kids are really impressed by the academics, and when they visit, they see it`s a beautiful place,” Parkhill said. ”They are not as caught up in where it is and what football is.”
– Facilities-Rec Hall, built in 1929 and refurbished in 1965, seats 7,000. For a team with tradition, it might serve as a forbidding pit, a place visitors hate to play. But for a program trying to build an identity, Rec Hall is a tough sell to a blue-chip recruit who can play at the Carrier Dome at Syracuse or the Dean Smith Center at North Carolina.
A new facility is being planned. But it is still two, three or four years away, according to Paterno.
”When we get the new facility, I honestly believe it becomes realistic to look at Penn State as a potential top 25 program,” Parkhill said. ”Until that happens, we feel we want to be as competitive as we can in this league and have our players doing well academically. Quite frankly, I don`t think, right now, it`s realistic for Penn State to say our goal is to win the national championship.”
– Academic requirements-The average SAT score for an entering freshman at Penn State is 1,090. Seventy-five percent of the incoming freshmen graduate in the top fifth of their high school classes. Some believe that if fastidious Penn State wants to build basketball prowess, it will have to take an occasional risk on a talented basketball player, hoping he can make it academically.
For instance, it has been written that Penn State did not recuit Doug West out of Altoona, Pa., because he was an academic risk. Well, he appears to have been a risk worth taking at Villanova, where he is into his senior season in apparent good standing. Coach John Chaney has preached for years at Temple that all many kids need is a chance. Penn State does take an occasional chance, Tarman said, but not many. And it doesn`t plan to take many.
”In a sense, we`ve done that on occasion, but what`s borderline to us may not be borderline to someone else,” Parkhill said. ”Each coach has to live within the academic philosophy of his institution. When I bring a kid in, I have to feel deep down inside that he can make it academically.”
– Conference affiliation-Early in this decade, for complex, disputed reasons, Penn State missed out on a chance both to form an all-sports conference and to join the Big East. Those failings set basketball back an untold degree. The Atlantic 10, despite the tournament success of Temple and Rhode Island last season, is still a second-level conference in terms of interest and exposure.
Still, Parkhill has made slow, undeniable progress. Last year`s team won only 13 games, but it lost to top-ranked Temple only 50-49 on the Owls` court. Parkhill feels that his team is about to get over the hump. Maybe by March, with 6-8 forward Tom Hovasse doing most of the pushing, it will. Maybe Penn State can sneak away with the Atlantic 10 tournament. Or grab an NIT bid.
”You can count on one hand the number of games the last two years that we haven`t been in in the last five minutes,” Parkhill said. ”Last year, we only won 13 games, but had we shot 46 percent from the floor and 72 percent from the foul line, which aren`t mind-boggling stats, we`d have been in the NIT. We`re a lot closer than people think. We just need to have a couple breaks and shoot the ball better, and I think we can do it.
”When you win, everybody jumps on the bandwagon,” Parkhill said. ”Penn State`s no different from any place else in that regard.”
