Explaining the PSU hoops player exodus to Transfer Portal
by Mark Brennan
22 hours ago
It looks like new Penn State basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry will be starting with the proverbial clean slate in Happy Valley. Tuesday, one day after the top Purdue assistant was named head coach of the Nittany Lions, a parade of PSU players entered the NCAA Transfer Portal.
As of this writing, there were six, according to 247Sports sources. We should note three of them were underclassmen — starting junior guards and top-two leading scorers Myreon Jones and Izaiah Brockington. UPDATE: 247Sports has now learned that sophomore forward Seth Lundy is also in the portal.
The others were veterans who had been honored on Senior Night earlier this month and are taking the NCAA up on its offer of an extra year of eligibility due to COVID-19’s impact on the 2020-21 season — guard Jamari Wheeler, and forwards John Harrar and Trent Buttrick. Jones, Brockington, Wheeler and Harrar made up four-fifths of the Nittany Lions’ starting lineup last season. Buttrick was in the eight-man rotation. Lundy began the season as a starter but ended it coming off the bench.
So what led to the mass exodus? Well, if you did not have the chance to follow the soap opera that was Penn State hoops last fall, we’ll bring you up to speed with why the player departures are not only understandable, but were pretty much expected. And it goes well beyond the simple transition from one coach to another.
PENN STATE HOOPS TRANSFER PORTAL TRACKER
In other words, it has very little to do with Shrewsberry, and very much to do with the way Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour and top men’s basketball administrator Lynn Holleran handled things five months ago.
Again, we’ve touched on most of this — some as recently as when announcing Shrewsberry’s hiring — but are offering it up again to provide background for folks who were not paying close attention to the program.
There is a perception that the players are simply angry that former coach Pat Chambers was forced out of the job Oct. 21. But it goes beyond that. The Nittany Lions were already in the middle of preseason practice when the university announced that Chambers was leaving after a months-long internal investigation into “new allegations of inappropriate conduct” by the coach.
Chambers had previously been reprimanded and suspended for a game for shoving PSU guard Myles Dread during a loss at Michigan in January of 2019. Last July, a story in The Undefeated revealed that also in January of 2019, Chambers made a racially insensitive comment to then Lion guard Rasir Bolton, who had been struggling with his game, saying, “I want to loosen the noose that’s around your neck.” Bolton eventually transferred to Iowa State but did not reveal what Chambers had said until talking to The Undefeated a year and a half after the comment was made.
Chambers apologized for the comment. In forcing Chambers out in October, Barbour said the university launched an internal investigation into new allegations of “inappropriate conduct” shortly after The Undefeated piece ran. She cited university privacy policies for not revealing what the allegations were and gave no explanation for why the investigation took more than three months to conduct.
But here is the important part: That critical information was not only withheld from the public, but also from Chambers’ players. At PSU basketball Media Day nearly a month later, certain Lions used words like “hurt” and “confused” while describing the situation. And Dread, of all people, expressed anger.
When asked if he was “at peace” with the way Chambers was forced out, Dread said, “No, I'm not at peace with it. And I will not be at peace with it until everybody has answers (as) to why. But that is all I have on the subject.”
Before being cut off by a member of PSU’s athletics communications staff, Wheeler began to take things a step further, indicating that the players were misled by the athletic department before Chambers finally told them he was stepping down.
“We haven't got any answers,” Wheeler said. “But it was hard, because earlier that day, before he announced that, we had a meeting with a couple of people on the (athletic department) staff at Penn State asking them — because we knew something was kind of off during like the two weeks leading up to it, we just felt the vibe. So me and a couple of guys on the team just had a private meeting with a couple of staff members that's up above and we were told that everything was good…”
It was at that point that Wheeler, speaking to reporters via Zoom, was cut off. When he returned, he politely declined to continue his previous answer.
On Dec. 2, when Dread hit a last-second shot that gave Penn State a 72-69 win over VCU at the Jordan Center, Barbour approached the players as they were leaving the floor following a short celebration. They largely ignored her.
During a press conference in January, Barbour was asked if she had addressed the players’ frustrations. Her answer suggested she had not.
"Look, I understand the question,” she said. “And I understand the interest in the answer, and I respect you asking it. But I made a statement in October. I know it fell short of what you all wanted. If there's any group that I would like to provide information to, it would be our students. But we've made all the comments that we're going to make. I'm focusing on the season, and I think our students have done a really good job of that.”
Rewinding back to Media Day in November, Brockington said the Nittany Lions had a team meeting shortly after Chambers was forced out to discuss THEIR collective future.
“As a team, we decided we want to play this season out for Coach (Chambers) and for each other,” Brockington said. “And that's really the number one thing on our mind right now.”
In retrospect, it did not take much reading between the lines to realize leaving the program at the end of the season was very much on the minds of many of the players. Meanwhile, after the Lions went 11-14 under former assistant coach and interim head coach Jim Ferry, Barbour went out and quickly landed Shrewsberry.
It has rightfully been hailed as an outstanding hire, as Shrewsberry has spent the past decade-plus working under two of the best basketball minds in the world — Purdue coach Matt Painter, and Boston Celtics coach and former Butler coach Brad Stevens.
But that has not prevented the athletic departments’ lack of communication with the players when all hell was breaking loose in October (and beyond) from coming back to bite it now.
A lack of communication on the part of the athletic department last fall has now left new coach Micah Shrewsberry with a depleted roster
247sports.com
