AP Wire | 06/22/2005 | Injury shelves PSU assistant’s playing days, not basketball:
“After three knee surgeries, Dan Earl decided last Christmas that his basketball-playing days were over. His coaching days, though, are just beginning.
“Earl, of Medford Lakes, N.J., is the newest assistant basketball coach at Penn State, the school he helped lead to an NCAA tournament appearance in 1996 as a vocal, heady point guard.
“He missed most of the next two seasons with injuries before finishing his last year of eligibility in 1999. Then, playing for a professional team in Germany last May, Earl hurt his an ankle and knee. He went through rehab before finally deciding over the holidays to end his playing career.
“‘It got tiring doing it over and over again,’ Earl said Wednesday in his new office, two days after he was hired. Wearing a crisp, new white Penn State polo shirt, he sat back in the chair of his new office, and added, ‘I saw the light on in my head.’
“So Earl decided to pursue coaching, ‘something I always I knew I wanted to get into in the back of my mind,’ he said.
“It would seem to be an easy transition. Head coach Ed DeChellis, who hired Earl on Monday, said Earl assumed a leadership role on and off the floor during his Penn State days and he remains a fan favorite. DeChellis would know – he was an assistant coach on the 1996 squad. … “