I do not know why I have not learned my lesson but maybe that’s the beauty of Penn State’s basketball programs.
Maybe it’s here to teach us a giant lesson.
Don’t have hope. Ever.
OK, that’s really bleak.
You should have hope and in general throughout your life, be a hopeful person. It’s a miserable existence without it otherwise.
That being said, being a Penn State basketball fan right now (maybe just overall) is a miserable existence.
In particular, here’s why I’m frustrated (and if you’re my boss, please close this tab, I swear I’m doing my job right now and always.) I enjoy the anywhere from two to eight hours I get per year to watch Penn State basketball teams play in the middle of the work day during the Big Ten Tournament every year.
That is not happening this year as both teams missed it in the first year the Big Ten limited the number of teams that can make the conference tournament and that’s a problem. One that can’t happen again.
While the problem isn’t that I have to do my job instead of watching Penn State, it’s a problem because of what it says about the state of Penn State’s basketball teams. For both programs, the 2024-2025 season was a massive let, but then again, maybe I’m the fool for having expectations – or hopefulness – about Penn State basketball.
On the men’s side, a relatively tenured roster started the season red hot, scoring 100 points in three games the first two months of the season – and then just started losing, getting injured and never, ever found anything that resembled a groove.
Puff Johnson. Injured. Ace Baldwin Jr. – while he did win the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year again – also injured for most of the year. Yanic Konan Niederhauser. Good for a while, cooled down a bit, still has some developing to do but just didn’t have the pieces around him.
That’s pretty much the story of Mike Rhoades’s 2024-25 season.
His team just never found a spark, which was disappointing after the promise they showed in his first year. There is some rightful concern about whether his style of coaching can compete in the Big Ten, a much tougher league than the Atlantic 10 where he brought Baldwin with him from VCU. Additionally, his head-scratching decisions to repeatedly not use timeouts in key situations — almost like he was cashing them in for a free coffee at the end of season — may have cost Penn State quite a few of its eight losses by two or fewer possessions.
On the women’s side, the Lady Lions never even sniffed the same level of success it had in 2023-24 – albeit that success last year included a late season collapse that caused them to miss the NCAA Tournament.
Carolyn Kieger’s 2024-25 team won just two games after starting the season 8-0. From December on, the Lady Lions were just 2-19. The 1-17 conference record Penn State posted ties the worst conference performance since Kieger’s first year as head coach in 2019-2020. Under Kieger, Penn State has never had a winning record in conference and of course, has not made the NCAA Tournament. The last trip came in 2014 under Coquese Washington.
The now 11-season NCAA Tournament drought is the longest in school history since the NCAA sanctioned a women’s tournament.
But this isn’t about the NCAA Tournament.
This is about the Big Ten Tournament. To get there, Penn State’s two basketball programs had to not be one of the three worst teams in the league. The men finished 17th out of 18th, and the women finished 18th out of 18th.
Rhoades himself decried the change in the system, and while his argument and those others who have made a similar one have their merits, I’m also not asking a whole lot here. Win a few more games – even if that’s easier said than done.
For a program that’s been haunted by flaming buses, had momentum stopped by global pandemics and whatever the curse of the Bryce Jordan Center and its shot clock is, this year was a special kind of rough that also isn’t acceptable.
I know that it feels like a lot to have expectations of Penn State’s hoops teams but as a fan who’s watched a lot of bad basketball over the years, I’m also not asking a lot. All I’m asking is that they’re not one of the three worst teams in the conference.
Looking ahead, Rhoades and his recruiting efforts show some hope for next season, and even with Kieger somewhat surprisingly coming back for 2025-2026, I’ll still sow some hope into that program because after all, I was a Lady Lions fan before I was a Penn State men’s basketball fan.
Regardless, all of the memories of March 2023 and Andrew Funk hitting three-pointers left and right feel like decades ago. And the memories of Maggie Lucas and Alex Bentley are quite literally from a decade ago.
But in that decade, I’ve gotten a real job. One that offers me the ability to put my iPad on Tuesday or Wednesday and even if we’re lucky Thursday or Friday Penn State hoops game – all to make the work day go by a bit faster.
Then again, this is the beautiful tragedy of being a hopeful Penn State hoops fan. Wanting something, maybe even just anything out of this program.
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