Over the 32 days leading up to college basketball season, we’re profiling 32 different teams who could be in the NIT mix, aided in this effort by those who know them best (or the closest we could get). Today, DJ Bauer responds by email to our questions about Penn State.
DJ Bauer, the man behind Bauertology, is a sports journalist currently working in Butte, Montana. He does bracketology on the side, and is quite successful at it. Bracket Matrix has him ranked 6th among the 174 qualified bracketologists over the last five years. He can be found on Twitter at @Bauertology, or on his personal account, @DJ_Bauer_99 (for non-college basketball stuff). He also posts his bracketology on the r/CollegeBasketball subreddit via his profile u/MetaKoopa99, and on his website, www.bauertology.com. He says he’s hoping to get some sort of preseason rankings up soon.
Here’s the full list of 32 for 32’s published so far, with links:
- Auburn, with the Sickos CBB Committee
- BYU, with Mitch Harper
- Cincinnati, with Zach Fries
- Dayton, with Tyler Cronin
- Duquesne, with Tristan Freeman
- Indiana, with Matt Cox
- Iona, with Sam Federman
- Iowa State, with Joe Stunardi
- James Madison, with Bennett Conlin
- Loyola, with Ky McKeon
- Michigan, with the Sickos CBB Committee
- Missouri, with Jim Root
- North Texas, with Harry Miers
- Northwestern, with John Templon
- Notre Dame, with Stuart McGrath
- Ohio State, with Mark Titus
- Oregon State, with Andy Dieckhoff
- Penn State, with DJ Bauer
- South Carolina, with Brian Rauf
- St. Bonaventure, with SBUnfurled
- St. John’s, with the Sickos CBB Committee
- Syracuse, with the Marshall Street Podcast
- Texas, with NIT Stu
- Utah, with Andrew Crowley
- Virginia Tech, with Ken Pomeroy
- Washington State, with Dave Andersen
- Wisconsin, with Cole Amundson
The Barking Crow: Penn State had a good year last year. A little too good, some might opine, given they missed the NIT. What are expectations for the Nittany Lions this season? Might we see them back in our beloved tournament?
As a Penn State fan, it was a joyous experience to see my beloved Nittany Lions not only reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011, but win their first NCAA Tournament game since 2001. Though, of course, it was bittersweet, as that means Penn State would not be able to play in the NIT, a place where they’ve become one of college basketball’s most elite programs over the last 35 or so years, twice winning the title and thrice winning the third-place game. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a team with a more impressive showing than that.
We missed out on the opportunity for the Nits to raise another NIT banner last season, but fret not—that opportunity could easily arise once again in 2024. Expectations are subdued for the Lions, as the plethora of playmakers that pushed Penn State past the NIT are all gone. Jalen Pickett is now booty ballin’ in the NBA. Seth Lundy is in the bigs too. God only knows where quirked-up white boy Andrew Funk is, but hopefully he’s splashing logo threes wherever that may be. And head coach Micah Shrewsberry is back home in Indiana, now guiding a Notre Dame program that enters 2023 with lofty expectations, having been picked 15th in the ACC preseason poll. (No, I’m not bitter.) Kanye Clary and Jameel Brown are, quite literally, the only returning players. The resulting 2023-24 roster can only be aptly described in the SpongeBob “Who are you people!?” meme. It’s a collection of transfers from every corner of the country, under the leadership of former VCU coach Mike Rhoades.
The good thing is that he brought some ballers from Richmond with him; Nick Kern will hopefully provide some much needed interior presence, and Adrian ‘Ace’ Baldwin could easily turn into Jalen Pickett Jr. given his assisting ability, with a heightened emphasis on his elite defense. Throw is a fabulous collection of basketball names—Puff Johnson, RayQwandis Mitchell, Qudus Wahab (I still have no idea how to pronounce ‘Qudus’)—and the ideal Andrew Funk replacement in Lafayette’s Leo O’Boyle (a sharpshooting, red-headed Patriot League product… sound familiar?), and we make have something to work with here. Of course, it remains to be seen how all these pieces will jell together in year one. But Rhoades’ track record of keeping VCU as the A10 program to beat amid constantly shifting lineups and injuries is worth noting. If this team can slightly outperform the expectations set by them in the preseason (13th in both the Big Ten media poll and the conference’s KenPom rankings), then we may have an NIT squad just yet. We know Penn State will get at minimum two conference wins (thanks, Maryland), so we just need to scrape five or six more together. It can happen!
TBC: Despite never winning a single NIT game before 1989, Penn State’s now won ten NIT games in a row, capturing the title in both 2009 and 2018. In addition to those championships, they’ve made the Final Four four other times in the post-1989 years. Does Penn State’s NIT excellence inspire any pride at the university, or is it left more unstated, as it goes at some other schools?
You can’t spell “Nittany Lions” without “NIT.” As stated before, you’d have a tough time finding another team that has displayed the same NIT prowess as Penn State. While the national media may label us as a “football school,” true Blue and White diehards know that we’re a basketball school at heart. You just have to dig beneath the single NCAA Tournament victory in the past two decades and home arena that frequently closes off 8,000+ seats while Beaver Stadium routinely fills up 100K; those statistics are just red herrings. While the football collective rips its hair out as the team continues to soil itself against Ohio State and Michigan, us basketball appreciators will bask in the glory of our two NIT banners hanging from the Bryce Jordan Center rafters—the addition of the second being perhaps my greatest moment of sporting pride in my four years as a student. So, yes, the NIT adoration at Penn State swells deep within… you just have to do some digging.
TBC: It’s notable that 1989 was the year Penn State basketball turned around, given Taylor Swift was born in 1989 near Reading, mere hours from State College. How much credit does Swift deserve for waking up this basketball program? If not her, who or what is most responsible for the recent rise?
People make the mistake of thinking that Taylor Swift’s seminal album “1989” was named in honor of the year of her birth, but us folk from nearby State College know that the multi-platinum record was actually a subtle nod to the year that Penn State basketball began its ascent to NIT elite. Don’t believe me? Just look at the track listing. The album starts with “Welcome to New York.” Where was the NIT semifinals and championship played for years, including for both of Penn State’s titles? New York City, of course. Then there’s “Blank Space,” with the famous refrain “I’ve got a Blank Space, baby, and I’ll write your name.” It’s clear that the blank space she’s referring to are the blank spaces in her NIT bracket. And the name she’s writing in to win it all? None other than Penn State—a wise choice by young Taylor. And the most obvious reference of all, “Bad Blood,” or really, if you read between the lines enough, “Blue Blood.” And who’s the Bluest Blood of all when it comes to NIT tenacity? The Blue and White Nittany Lions of Penn State. I rest my case.
TBC: It’s a time of transition for the program, with Mike Rhoades entering his first year in the Big Ten after spending the last six coaching VCU. Rhoades grew up in Pennsylvania and played at Lebanon Valley College. How does it affect Penn State to have a head coach who comes from the area?
Unlike the snake Micah Shrewsberry who left Happy Valley to return to his home state, it’s clear that Mike Rhoades is a more sophisticated man who cares deeply about making a strong impression in the place where he laid his roots. As a native Pennsylvanian, I expect it won’t be long until Rhoades starts referring to subs as hoagies, saying ‘yinz’ and ‘jawn’ on the regular, and getting in heated debates about whether Sheetz or Wawa is better. (The answer is Sheetz, by the way.) How this affects the performance of the basketball team remains to be seen. But when the Nittany Lions inevitably blow a 22-point lead to Rutgers this year, it’ll be comforting to know that our head coach will continue the tried-and-true PA tradition of never making adjustments, like firing Matt Canada or signing a starting pitcher that you’ve actually heard of. That’s just the way we want it in the Keystone State!
TBC: Penn State fans made an impression in 2018, at least on me, by showing up in such force for the NIT Championship at Madison Square Garden. These days, the Final Four is out on the road, finding itself at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis this season. I’m curious, especially given the potential NIT Final Four attendance implications: Not exactly Midwestern, but not exactly on the East Coast, with which region does Penn State more closely align?
I’m glad the Blue and White faithful left such a strong impression in 2018—very happy to say I was one of the lucky few in attendance for their big-time semifinal win over Mississippi State at MSG (unironically an experience I’ll never forget). It’s a shame that the NIT no longer has a home, but at least we’re used to that in PA—no one can make up their mind on which region we belong to. Pennsylvanians use a lot of the same mannerisms as Midwestern states—your “opes” and “gonna squeeze past ya’s” and all that—but the Midwest vehemently disavows us (fine by me; the less association with Ohio, the better). You can’t call us an Atlantic state either though, as we’re the only of the 13 colonies to not border the ocean (at least, according to the quick Google search I just did). So Pennsylvania is kind of in no man’s land. And I think that makes the bond with the now-vagabond NIT all that stronger.
TBC: Though they’ve only won one WNIT, and though they’ve fallen on harder times in recent years, most would consider Penn State’s women’s basketball team a stronger program than its men’s basketball. Is this much a topic of conversation around Penn State basketball, and why might the disparity exist?
It’s easy to forget that the Lady Lions were once a powerhouse program in the ’80s and ’90s, with the 1988-89 campaign otherwise interrupting a stretch of 15 straight NCAA Tournament appearances. As such, there’s been a notable disparity between the men’s and women’s teams over the course of history. And it pains me to say it, but the ladies have a lot of catching up to do. They’ve simply overshot the mark way too often to join the men as one of the NIT’s elite. How can you win the NIT if you’re in the NCAA Tournament every year? Thankfully, they have course-corrected as of late, making back-to-back appearances in 2017 and 2018… though perhaps they’ve gone a little too far, as that 2018 trip stands as their most recent. At least the last four seasons represent an encouraging trend—from seven wins in 2020, to nine in 2021, to 11 in 2022, to 14 in 2023. Slowly but surely, the Lady Lions are building their way back to the NIT sweet spot. It’s only a matter of time!
TBC: Dare we dream of a Penn State NIT title?
No dreaming necessary—the Nittany Lions have proven time and time again why they are a force to be reckoned with when NIT time comes around. Given that Penn State will likely be, at minimum, on the NIT bubble all year as a consequence of simply being a Power 5 team, the path is clear for this rag-tag group of transfers—take care of business in the non-conference with only one or two embarrassing losses to a team like Rider, then coast to seven or eight wins in Big Ten play, and should put us in the range of an NIT 4 or 5 seed (or whatever the hell seeding the NIT does nowadays) at about 18-14 overall. That’s when we strike where the opposition least expects it! I can already see that glorious third banner rising to the rafters as the booming crowd of 2,500 at the Bryce Jordan Center lets out a mighty “We Are! Penn State!” roar. It’s moments like that for why you love the sport so much in the first place.
