The new official mascot of Penn State basketball. |
I was at work during the first half but came home and listened to the second half of this shit show on PSU's student-produced Com Radio, though I really wish I had discovered a feed with Steve Jones and Dick Jerardi calling the game for the Penn State Sports Network. According to my Twitter sources, Jones was being openly critical about Ed DeChellis and the program (which I will no longer refer to as the "Fighting DeChellises" since they don't even put up much of a fight these days). For those of you who aren't familiar with Jones, he is the type of person who will defend a coach to the bitter end. This has led to him being labeled on the PSU message boards as a 'blind homer' of sorts. When somebody such as Jones is openly criticizing your performance on air however, you know your days as a coach are numbered.
This brings me to my next point: Tim Curley, Graham Spanier, or whoever the hell is in charge of making such decisions, needs to do the right thing and force DeChellis to resign effective immediately. Keeping Ed on board as coach through the Big Ten slate would be merely prolonging the inevitable and the last thing us 50 remaining Penn State basketball fans want to see is a team that just doesn't give a shit, plodding along through another tortuous 19 games (that's 18 conference games plus a loss in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament). Promoting Dan Earl or Lewis Preston to interim head coach would give this team a shot of energy going into the Big Ten schedule, which could lead to a couple of 'feel good' wins and at the same time give the Athletic Department more time to find Ed's successor. Surely, this time around, they will have no choice but to conduct an actual national search since there is nobody from the PSU basketball family remotely qualified to take over this position*
Year 8 of the DeChellis era is proving to be eerily similar to Year 8 of his predecessor's. Time to break out the signs again... |
All of this talk about Ed's replacement of course, is rather meaningless until his ouster becomes official. Let's all hope that the higher-ups aren't feeling as sadistic as usual in their treatment of PSU hoops fans.
* Presuming Dan Earl doesn't get promoted to full-time coach, of course. Or that Pete Lisicky gets the call on his red phone out in Arizona and accepts the job...come to think of it, that latter scenario doesn't sound so awful.
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Group hug.
ReplyDeleteThis Post Title = Awesomeness
ReplyDeleteBut overall I must agree. It's time...
I always forget that Penn State plays basketball until I take a look at my Twitter stream.
ReplyDeleteIt's times like this that I'm glad I'm a wrestling fan.
ReplyDeleteShit, compared to basketball, football seems like a juggernaut right now.
ReplyDeleteLove the title! And that's a notable stipulation in your asterisk. It's for that reason that I wouldn't mind seeing Ed bungle the rest of the season. If the team "turns it around" under Danny Earl, you know Curley would love to just hand him the job.
ReplyDeleteYou're 100% right that the next coach must have ZERO ties to PSU.
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ReplyDeleteThe Dan Earl asterisk was more of a joke than anything else. Granted, I can't say with 100% confidence that Curley WOULDN'T consider promoting him under such a scenario. This program just needs an act of desperation in order to start showing some life on the court again and I feel cutting Ed loose mid-season would do just that.
ReplyDelete