Collier: PSU basketball stuck in winters of despair:
“UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Winter has enforced its typically brutal lockdown at Penn State, where the biting cold, the slush-gray sky and the hardened faces of overworked students headed to the day’s first classes all reflect the grim presumption that spring’s just about an eon away.
“It is not yet 9 a.m., but Ed DeChellis already has been in his office for hours. He was there well after 1 a.m. the night before as well, going over tape of the Penn State-Illinois game, in which the No. 1 team so overmatched DeChellis’ Nittany Lions that the crowd at the Bryce Jordan Center seemed as interested in a courtside wing-eating contest as in the fact that Penn State’s players couldn’t get close enough to Illinois’ ultra-quick athletes to even apply any defensive principles.
“In one startling sequence, Dee Brown, the spectacular Illinois point guard, took a long defensive rebound near the top of the circle and started up court into a den of Lions. Brown was 1 on 3 and he beat all three to the hoop.
“DeChellis grew up in Monaca, never figuring he would end up as one of those guys who was always trying to answer The Question.
“The Question seems ageless now, not that it predates the chicken-egg conundrum, but long enough to make the if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest thing look almost fresh. The Question — why isn’t Penn State any good at basketball? — has walked this campus like a specter for generations. …”