O’Boyle and Mitchell are gone due to being out of eligibility. But those two, Wahab, and Clary just opens up ships for the 4 incoming freshman.
Basketball Penn State guard Kanye Clary no longer with team
- Thread starter Dylan Callaghan-Croley
- Start date
If he believes he has NBA opportunities I wouldn't consider that horrible. Every young man wants to follow his dreams and opportunities and it would be a reflection of how Rhoades developed him which is a positive for recruiting going forward and adds to coach Roades' resume as a coach. Putting players into the NBA is a big part of a coach's resume. But obviously I hope he returns to help Rhoades continue to build the program.
PSU's remote location doesn't help. Driving 2+ hrs to an October football game is a lot different than driving 2+ hours in the winter for a basketball game.
That said I believe attendance would be at least 30% higher if we had a more competitive team. I recall having some good crowds during the Talor Battle years.
Remote location is less a factor than Penn State's greed, IMO.
I just looked at single game ticket prices for the next BJC game, 2/24 vs. Indiana:
Lower level seats are $70 + fees = $87.30
Upper level seats are $28 + fees = $38.45
That's why PSU probably should be playing in an arena the size of the hockey arena. That way, it mostly would be filled and create a true home court advantage. The BJC simply is too big for that sport considering that many games are played during weeknights in the dead of winter, and it's asking a lot to expect people from outside the general PSU area to trapze through mountains in what often can be hazardous conditions. I live in Pittsburgh, and all of the PSU basketball games that I ever attended were on Saturday afternoons or nights (I didn't attend PSU or else I would've gone to weeknight games).
BC plays both their basketball and hockey games in the same arena, which probably is much smaller than the BJC. Would PSU ever consider playing its basketball games at Pegula? Probably not.
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The remote location is just another factor in the challenge. Looking at our last two NCAA caliber teams, here are the numbers down the stretch...
Saturday 1/11/20 - ranked 20th hosting Wisconsin - 10,139
Saturday 1/18/20 - Ohio St (Thon Game) - 14,785
Wednesday 1/29/20 - ranked 24th hosting Indiana - 7,656
Saturday 2/8/20 - ranked 22 hosting Minnesota - 15,261 (bravo)
Saturday 2/15/20 - ranked 13th hosting Northwestern - 14,402
Tuesday 2/18/20 - ranked 9th hosting Illinois - 9,506 (really disappointing)
Wednesday 2/26/20 - ranked 16th hosting Rutgers - 8,345
Tuesday 3/3/20 - ranked 20th hosting 16th Michigan St - 13,437
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Wednesday 1/11/23 - Indiana - 8,502
Saturday 1/21/23 - Nebraska - 11,297
Sunday 1/29/23 - Michigan - 12,047
Wednesday 2/8/23 - Wisconsin - 7,213
Tuesday 2/14/23 - Illinois - 7,297
Sunday 2/26/23 - Rutgers - 12,082
Sunday 3/5/23 - hosting 21st Maryland - 10,672 (really disappointing)
There isn't another team in the conference outside of Northwestern that has this many empty seats in their building as they're pushing for an NCAA bid. There are many factors here (BJC too big, fanbase too spread out for weeknight games, lack of fans that make attending basketball games a priority, etc)...but they are factors that no one other than Northwestern faces (and it's that much tougher to recruit bringing high school kids into a morgue when our peers have packed houses night in and night out, most even in their down years).
Agree completely...another area that needs to be looked at when trying to build this fanbase/program.
Since the player and the player's father were vocally badgering the coach about playing time......per people that attended home games......I'd say.....no loss here.
I agree with your thinking except for playing at Pegula. PSU averages about 7,700 fans and Pegula only holds 5,700. I think PSU could average close to 10,000 per game if they fielded a more competitive team.
Thanks for letting me know about Pegula's attendance; I didn't realize that it was that small even though I did attend a hockey game there against MSU in November 2022. I probably should've looked up its capacity before I posted. Regardless, Pegula's capacity would be too small for basketball and the Big 10 probably never would approve it.
I guess with money as tight as it is and with the cutbacks, unless a sugar daddy would donate the money to build a 10,000 seat basketball arena like Pegula did with the hockey arena, PSU is going to be stuck playing its games in the BJC, which is akin to when the Indians played their games at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and even big crowds would look small.
Nice research, wow!
It will take time. We need a couple good seasons in a row of dancing and the support will come in terms of excitement and attendance increasing. But we will always be hindered by our location and we are a football school.
I like the idea of a small basketball only venue but that ain't happening until the team starts showing success. I know you are saying we need the smaller basketball arena to improve our chances of success by attracting recruits and being a true home court advantage but I just don't see how it could be justified now.
Johnson is also listed on the roster as a Senior, so who knows if he'll return. It would be surprising if the four you mention are the only moves made to the roster between now and the Fall.
Puff is in the same boat as Ace in that while they are in their 4th season, they still have their COVID year available.
On the minus side...you can count on 2 fingers the number of fanbases in the country where a substantial number of fans care more about wrestling than their men's basketball team.
Wrestling draws 1k-2k more per event but that average is helped by 1 or 2 top opponents at the BJC where they get 15,000.
Now assume PSU wrestling was in the bottom third of the BiG standings. How many would attend? My point is that PSU would draw 10k per game if the team was consistently in the top half of the BiG.
And part of the challenge of getting there is that we'd be passing a bunch of schools that will pack their building night in and night out even if their team is awful. And not just the traditional basketball schools (Ohio St, Indiana, etc)...freaking Nebraska's fanbase gives their team incredible support, and we've won more NCAA tournament games in the past 11 months than they've won in their school's history...or Rutgers, who has won 1 NCAA game in the past 40 years, yet has an incredible home court advantage that's helped them land 2 incredible recruits for next season.
I've mentioned before that our conference has 7 teams that have played in a National Title game in the past 20ish years...to be in the top half of the conference to get to the point where we can draw a 2/3rds full arena, we'd be passing some blue bloods and/or schools that will draw way more fans even in the worst of times. I'm sure in a parallel place, Indiana football fans have been stating that they will be able to fill their stadium if they can just consistently finish in the top 3 of the B1G East most years...easier said than done.
The key to me is somehow getting 10k fans for weeknight Big Ten games even when we're not in the top half of the conference...and then filling the building when we are. It's just brutal that we moved up to 9th in the country and played in front of <10k fans in 2020, or that we had a game last season against a ranked opponent on a Sunday with our NCAA hopes on the line, and we could only get 10.6k. There are very few power 6 teams in the country that would play in front of a 60% capacity arena in those scenarios (and none of them are in the Big Ten).
Again, part of why Micah deserves so much credit for what he did here in two years, and why Rhoades has a really tough job ahead of him.
Definitely some different factors that would play into it...first off, for either of them to move on without having to sit out a year, they'd need to graduate from PSU. No idea what track either of them are on. I'm sure Rhoades would work harder to convince Ace to stay, but I'm also sure that Ace would have more $$$ opportunities elsewhere should he want to leave.
Guys like Brown and Lilley will be able to leave and play immediately elsewhere, which makes them candidates to move on (if Rhoades agrees that he needs more ships)...however, someone like Aire or Puff (if he doesn't graduate) would be tougher to "process" to me since he'd have to sit out if he heads elsewhere.
Helps to have wrestling team that has won 15 of the last 12 national titles. Same with women’s volleyball when they won 18 out of 16!
Daily Dish: St. John's, Arkansas and Memphis are cautionary tales of how a transfer-heavy plan can go awry
The data on the 10 teams with seven or more transfers from the 2023 cycle is jarring...
247sports.com
We don't get much attention here, but I kind of feel like our portal use lacks context.
Of course, I don't follow the others enough to know either.
Coach only did the transfers out of necessity this year. He obviously wants to build with high school kids as shown by his recruiting class. I do think there will be some attrition and he will get one or two more kids out of the portal this year though.Daily Dish: St. John's, Arkansas and Memphis are cautionary tales of how a transfer-heavy plan can go awry
The data on the 10 teams with seven or more transfers from the 2023 cycle is jarring...
We don't get much attention here, but I kind of feel like our portal use lacks context.
Of course, I don't follow the others enough to know either.
I noticed that when Clary was out due to (injury?) that the team started winning big games on the road. I was expecting a total collapse since he was the leading scorer but the opposite happened. I also noticed that the team started losing again when he got back. My buddies and I we just talking about this recently.
Remember that when Clary was out, we played our two easiest road games of the year to this point. He came back as we beat Iowa, and then dropped three straight to NCAA teams.
Regardless who is playing, those results would make some sense.
Spin it any way you want but the team played better when he was out. If I recall correctly, he got 18 minutes for the Iowa game instead of his usual 40.
Good stuff. Quite a swing between weekday and weekend games. With travel, weekday games are a problem. I am referring to the remote location.
True. I always thought PSU could do a much better job at organizing bus trips for bball/ hockey etc weekday games from places like Harrisburg, Scranton, and Allentown. You make it ‘user friendly’ in that you don’t have to worry about driving in bad weather over the mountains or worry about parking and more people would go IMO.
Too bad there’s no train station in state college. A party train up to the games and back would have been a big hit.
True. I always thought PSU could do a much better job at organizing bus trips for bball/ hockey etc weekday games from places like Harrisburg, Scranton, and Allentown. You make it ‘user friendly’ in that you don’t have to worry about driving in bad weather over the mountains or worry about parking and more people would go IMO.
Too bad there’s no train station in state college. A party train up to the games and back would have been a big hit.
Did you see the Rutgers game? No one should refer to that game as playing better. We played bad, Rutgers played worse. We played far better in the first half of the game prior to Rutgers, then Clary got hurt in the second half. No one is better off without their best offensive player.
That was the first game without him. And since our offense was almost entirely a few perimeter passes until 10-12 seconds left on the clock and he would just drive to the basket. Takes awhile to adjust and for the other players get used to actually playing basketball.
And they got better the next game. And even better the third game. Weird how it all fell sort when he came back.
Joe Pa talked a lot about that Bullet Train that would connect State College to NYC....hasn't happened yetTrue. I always thought PSU could do a much better job at organizing bus trips for bball/ hockey etc weekday games from places like Harrisburg, Scranton, and Allentown. You make it ‘user friendly’ in that you don’t have to worry about driving in bad weather over the mountains or worry about parking and more people would go IMO.
Too bad there’s no train station in state college. A party train up to the games and back would have been a big hit.
You and coach Rhodes, obviously have never a had severe concussion. Many that have had one or more of these experience personality changes which include dysphoria, depression, lack of direction, lack of purpose, confusion, inability to concentrate and sustained head aches. Easy enough for a mentally soft entitled couch potato , aka idiot, to call someone recovering from such an injury a quitter.
If still experiencing such symptoms he shouldn’t be cleared to play. And he shouldn’t be whining about playoff time. And just as important, his father should be insisting he not play until recovered.
Agree but with the following caveats:
1. Concussion patients often think they can do things and can't so whining about playing time is normal for concussion patients.
2. They do not clear themselves to play and those that do often F-Up.
3. His father is not a CTE expert and asking him to be one is preposterous. If I were his father I would take him off to the CTE clinic located at 30 Buxton Farm Road, Stamford, CT 06905 for a second opinion.
That about covers it.
turns out to be a blessing for those of us in town. Being a remote destination is beneficial today.
