Penn State Basketball: 3 Reasons Nittany Lions won’t be dancing this year
By Evan Smith
Terrible situation leads to terrible results
Simply put, this team was not built to succeed.
When you fire your head coach just days before the season starts (sorry, he “resigned”… yeah, right) and your players publicly state their displeasure, well, there’s a reason you’ve never seen that before.
I have my issues with some of Jim Ferry’s in game decisions, and despite mild success the first game, the benching of Seth Lundy has clearly been a disaster, I don’t blame Jim Ferry. This is an impossible situation. Remember these quotes?
“I’m not at peace with the firing. I will not be at peace until everybody has answers as to why.” — Myles Dread
"“I’m still confused and don’t understand what happened. I just want to give a shoutout to [Pat] and we love him so much…he’s one of the best coaches I ever played for. I know there’s a bunch of things about him being racist. I’ve been here four years — a Black athlete…all the way from Florida — not one time was Coach racist or anything like that. …so we have a private meeting with a couple staff members that’s up above and we were told that everything was good” — Jamari Wheeler"
There were plenty more quotes here.
Some people have asked why we haven’t seen more of the freshman, particularly Daillon Johnson and Abdou Tsimbila.Remember, Jim Ferry is the INTERIM head coach. He wasn’t named head coach. It’s not his job to coach for next year’s team. He’s coaching for his job now, so of course he will play the best players.
And remember, the Nittany Lions don’t have a single recruit signed for next year.
Given the circumstances, it’s a miracle this team was the next team out at one point in Lunardi’s bracketology.
The #climb will only get steeper next year.