PSU ill-equipped for overdue visit to Rutgers:
“For the Penn State Nittany Lions, it’s time to revisit an old memory.
“To be more precise, no one on the current team except for deep subs Dan Adler and John Kelly, and senior bit player Jamaal Tate — all New Jersey natives — probably knows anything about the Rutgers Athletic Center.
“Nor do any of the PSU assistant coaches.
“But Ed DeChellis remembers. The PSU head coach was a young assistant under Bruce Parkhill when the Lions last set foot in the RAC — Feb. 27, 1991.
“It was the Lions’ last regular-season game in the Atlantic 10. No one had much of an inkling the Nits would two weeks later be A-10 tournament champions and headed to their first NCAA tournament in 26 years.
And certainly no one was dreaming such dreams that night. The Lions were drilled 92-70, their worst loss in a 98-game stretch of success from 1989-93.
“This was the last really good team to play at Rutgers — incredibly, the last group of Scarlet Knights to play in the NCAAs. It got so bad that night that big point guard Earl Duncan, a Syracuse transfer noted for his mouth, began talking to Parkhill as he dribbled by — ‘Coach, get someone out here who can guard me!’ “