Headlined by four-star guard Kayden Mingo, the 2025 Penn State men’s basketball recruiting class is the best in program history. However, head coach Mike Rhoades is coming off a season in which he missed the Big Ten Tournament and has had a sluggish start to the transfer portal cycle. So, according to a report from Jeff Goddman, Rhoades is bringing in some help.
Penn State is set to hire Scott Pera as its general manager for basketball. Pera is a Penn State alum who coached on Rhoades’s staff at Rice and replaced him as the program’s head coach when Rhoades left for VCU in 2017. He has plenty of experience and local ties in Pennsylvania, so there’s a chance he can jumpstart the Nittany Lions’ sluggish roster overhaul.
Mike Rhoades reunites with Scott Pera, who is set to serve as his general manager
Since the season came to an end, Rhoades has locked down his talented recruiting class that features Mingo, three-star wing Mason Blackwood, and three-star center Justin Houser. He’s also added combo guard Reggie Grodin and an intriguing European seven-footer, Ivan Juric, who could be insurance for Yanic Konan Niederhauser as he tests the NBA draft waters this offseason.
However, Rhoades has added just one transfer, Josh Reed from Cincinnati. The 6-foot-7 junior averaged just four points for the Bearcats last season and barely shot over 40 percent from the field in his limited playing time. Reed should take on a bigger role in Happy Valley, but he won’t be nearly enough to catapult the Nittany Lions into NCAA Tournament contention.
Across his first two years at Penn State, Rhoades leaned heavily on Ace Baldwin Jr., who followed him from VCU. Now, he’ll turn the reins over to Mingo in his freshman season, which is a serious responsibility for a true freshman, even for the highest-rated recruit in Penn State history.
For Mingo to have success, he’ll need more talent around him than Baldwin had, and early in Mingo’s career, a lot more. Yet, Rhoades hasn’t proven that he’s able to attract that caliber of veteran talent to a Big Ten football school.
Rhoades’s pressure defense and high-energy style of play have been successful in the past, but so far haven’t yielded any meaningful results for Penn State. He’s 32-32 over two seasons, and even in an athletic department preoccupied with competing for a national title on the football field, patience will eventually wear thin. Whether Rhoades pushed to add Pera to his staff or the change was forced upon him, it’s a necessary change to a program that has failed to reach escape velocity since Micah Shrewsberry darted for Notre Dame.