{"id":129979,"date":"2015-02-27T15:14:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T20:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pennstatehoops.com\/?p=129979"},"modified":"2015-02-27T15:14:59","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T20:14:59","slug":"inflection-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pennstatehoops.com\/pennstatehoops-com-has-ceased-operations\/inflection-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflection Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Basketball&#8217;s easy, right? Only takes a couple of recruits, we&#8217;ve got a million of \u2019em in our backyard, we all picked Penn State without anybody throwing a free education at us.<\/p>\n<p>How hard can it be?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Wg7ct6aQs3E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Before every season starts, we all know who has a good chance of making it to the tournament\u00a0without\u00a0looking at a roster, scanning Street &amp; Smith or subscribing to <a href=\"http:\/\/kenpom.com\">kenpom.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To paraphrase another <em>Moneyball<\/em> line, there are teams with a winning tradition, and there&#8217;s everyone else.\u00a0And every fan and schoolboy\/recruit knows which is which.<\/p>\n<p>In the last 30 years, only two high-major programs have joined the perennial NCAA tournament group without cheating (like Memphis and Baylor) or otherwise compromising admissions standards: Wisconsin and Pitt.<\/p>\n<p>The coaches who get the credit for those clean turnarounds &#8211; Stu Jackson and Ben Howland &#8211; failed at their next stops even as their schools took advantage of the tradition they established.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s incredibly hard.<\/p>\n<p>For the third time in the last three decades, Penn State is in a position to legitimately improve its fortunes.<\/p>\n<p>The first chance came in the mid 1990s, when Bruce Parkhill was recruiting with other high majors: Parade All America Dan Earl, top-50 junior Pete Lisicky (pursued by Duke and UCLA), top-125 Calvin Booth, state high school players of the year Matt Gaudio and Glen Sekunda.<\/p>\n<p>The second came in the mid 2000s, when Ed DeChellis assembled a group of &#8220;reaches&#8221; that hit and started winning some games: Geary Claxton, Jamelle Cornley, Talor Battle, and added a highly-rated Jeff Brooks.<\/p>\n<p>Those fragile foundations crumbled soon after.<\/p>\n<p>The poor performance against Northwestern and somewhat disappointing Big 1o record has obscured it, but Chambers has this program in rare territory.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Penn State&#8217;s tradition and its current record, he&#8217;s somehow recruited with the big boys, and better than anyone here since Parkhill.<\/p>\n<p>Chambers has signed Geno Thorpe, Shep Garner, Mike Watkins and Josh Reaves &#8211; guys reported to have legitimate high-major interest. It sounds like Joe Hampton, who committed in August for the class that signs LOIs next year, is cut from the same cloth.<\/p>\n<p>Penn State has survived, and on only rare occasions thrived, with ambitious guys for whom Penn State was their best, and often only, high-major conference offer. Penn State is successfully recruiting with its peers for only the second time in 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Chambers has five scholarships in this recruiting cycle: one available for the late signing period this year, and the rest (with Hampton committed for one of them) for next. The 2015 early signing period is 257 days away.<\/p>\n<p>The next nine months bears watching.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Basketball&#8217;s easy, right? Only takes a couple of recruits, we&#8217;ve got a million of \u2019em in our backyard, we all picked Penn State without anybody throwing a free education at us. How hard can it be? &nbsp; &nbsp; Before every season starts, we all know who has a good chance of making it to the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pennstatehoops.com\/pennstatehoops-com-has-ceased-operations\/inflection-point\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Inflection Point&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v16.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Inflection Point - PennStateHoops.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pennstatehoops.com\/pennstatehoops-com-has-ceased-operations\/inflection-point\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inflection Point - PennStateHoops.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Basketball&#8217;s easy, right? 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