STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Few teams can say they ended their previous season on a five-game winning streak. It’s just that Penn State’s successful run to finish the 2008-9 campaign came in the second-tier postseason tournament.
Still, hopes are high in Happy Valley after Penn State took the NIT title, the school’s first-ever basketball championship in a national tournament. Now the young Nittany Lions have their sights set on taking the next step: making the NCAAs.
“We’ve got a lot of unfinished business,” Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said Monday. “I don’t sit here and say, ‘We’ve arrived.’ That’s foolish.”
At the least, the NIT crown was a nice confidence booster for a success-starved program that seemed to be in a perennial rebuilding mode.
The Nittany Lions set school records last season with 27 wins, including 17 at home. That’s big news on campus where football is the undisputed king.
Penn State basked in the notoriety, and coaches are optimistic about recruiting and the buzz on campus.
via After NIT win, Penn St. hopes NCAA return | AP | 10/19/2009.