The emptiest feeling as a sports fan is the one that comes in the hours right after the season ends.
Virtually 99 percent of the time, it’s a feeling of sadness as the season slams its door shut, maybe right as the plot was about to just get good. The feeling that lingers as you rack your brain searching for that next sport to fill the void.
It might come tomorrow, it might come as you’re taking the trash out immediately after the game, it may even come weeks later when there’s absolutely nothing on TV that catches your eye. Even after championship years, the crushing weight that feeling provides seemingly can’t be wrestled away by optimism.
The season is over. It’s final. It’s in the past. That’s it.
But every so often, there’s one percent that wins out. It rises up inside of you, triumphs over that dejection and sparks the same belief you had when the book was just getting good. It’s the one that makes being a fan worth it.
That’s the exact feeling we just got from this Penn State men’s basketball program.
Even after a loss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Texas, this program is on the verge of something special, this program is about to make noise and this program has finally figured it out.
It took 12 years to hear what we heard last Sunday – Penn State’s name read on Selection Sunday. It took 22 years to see what we saw on Thursday – a win in the NCAA Tournament. It’s not going to take long for this program to do any of that again.
The question isn’t if there’s a next chapter. The question is what is in the next chapter and how big is it?
It starts with Pat Kraft handing Micah Shrewsberry a Publishers Clearing House-sized blank check because in the course of roughly 60 days, the Brad Stevens protege changed the direction of this program for the better.
He took a roster full of players that didn’t sign up to play for him years ago, sprinkled in several key transfers and bonded them together forever into maybe the most special Penn State hoops roster of all time.
He made Penn State basketball fun. He made it must-see TV. He made it possible to believe, maybe not once again, but for the first time, this program can do something different.
There is something intangibly different happening right now. Expectations in Happy Valley went from Penn State being a football school with a basketball team to Penn State being a school with a football program and a basketball program.
In college athletics, there are schools, teams and programs. Schools often neglect the teams, the teams largely underperform but programs play meaningful games at meaningful times of the year.
That’s what the Lions did against Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, Texas A&M and Texas. It may not have had the pieces to get past the quite literal big boys in Purdue and Texas just yet but did we really expect any of this when this season started?
Did we really expect Jalen Pickett, a 5th year transfer from Siena, to become the first All-American since the Eisenhower administration?
Did we really think that Andrew Funk was going to give one of the single greatest game performances on the biggest stage of the season like he did against the Aggies?
Honestly, ask yourself if you saw this season changing the course of Penn State’s men’s basketball program like the way it did.
The tournament was the goal. Now it’s the expectation and more-so, it’s the expectation that Penn State should play at the same level of the top tier college basketball programs in this country.
There are no more excuses. We’ve got the proof. We just watched them do it.
Now, going forward, it’s a failure if Penn State doesn’t make the tournament. Going forward, it’s time for Penn State to give itself a chance to chase all of those other goals the top tier basketball programs don’t just yearn but achieve: conference titles, top 10 recruiting classes, Final Fours, and even yes, a national title, especially if Shrewsberry sticks around.
There is no more just going along for the ride, no more dollar dog nights at the BJC in a desperate plea to get students to trek from East Halls down Curtin Road. That’s over.
That’s what this special season did. It made you actually feel that there’s a lot possible at the corner of University and Curtin. It made you believe again. For some of you, it made you believe for the first time, and it’s that belief that helps that one percent triumph. It’s that faith that makes you remember seasons like this one.
It’s the feeling that makes you realize Penn State basketball is in a much better place. The feeling that the better days for Penn State’s basketball program are finally here.
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