In his second year leading the program, head coach Mike Rhoades has Penn State men’s basketball off to an 11-2 start following an 86-66 win over Penn on Sunday. The matchup was the Nittany Lion’s final non-conference game of the season and they closed out non-conference play with a 10-1 mark.
The hot start has not only turned some heads in the Big Ten for Penn State’s win over then-No. 8 Purdue at the start of December, but it has begun to garner some national attention. Rhoades’s team did not crack the Week 9 AP Top 25 poll but for the fourth-straight week, they were among the other’s receiving votes. Penn State has yet to climb into the Top 25 but was closest directly following its win over the Boilermakers.
For a basketball program like Penn State’s, which has not been historically successful and has only qualified for the NCAA Tournament three times this century, it is much harder to earn the respect of the AP voters. It doesn’t help that the Nittany Lion’s non-conference slate has been particularly weak. The 11-2 start only includes two wins over Power Confernece opponents along with two losses, to Clemson and Rutgers. The conference loss at Rutgers, just five days after the win over Purdue, is holding the Nittany Lions back from the Top 25.
Since that loss to the Scarlet Knights, Penn State has beaten Coppin State, Drexel, and Penn, not exactly a competitive group of mid-major foes. Stacking wins will help the Nittany Lions make a compelling case for the tournament at the end of the season, but thus far the Nittany Lions have an 0-1 record in Quad 1 games and are 1-1 in Quad 2 games. Crucially, they are undefeated in Quad 3 and 4 games, which, despite not having any huge wins, leaves the team at No. 32 in the Net Rankings.
Penn State will dive back into the conference play in the new year, hosting Northwestern on Thursday, January 2 at the Bryce Jordan Center, and Indiana on Sunday, January 5 at The Palestra. With an underwhelming non-conference slate, Big Ten play is when Rhoades and his team can prove that they belong in the upper echelon of college basketball this season.