College basketball season seems to start earlier every year. For Penn State this year, it doesn’t seem to. It does.
The Nittany Lions tip off at 6:30 p.m. today against Illinois State in the eight-team Black Coaches Association tournament at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. It is the earliest start in PSU history.
Should they beat the Redbirds, 10-19 and last place in the Missouri Valley Conference a year ago, the Nits probably will meet the host Marquette Golden Eagles in the second round tomorrow night. The final-round games are Tuesday.
That’s three games in three nights, regardless of the results, for a team that finished last in the Big Ten (9-19, 3-13) for the third straight year in ’03-04, with five new faces and two new starting forwards this season.
What is coach Ed DeChellis thinking? He’s thinking as much PT as possible as quickly as possible.
‘We wanted to do something where our young kids would have to play and we could get our young kids as much experience as we could,’ he said.