Posts tagged ‘NIT’
A Pivotal Season for Nittany Lion Hoops
The Penn State men’s basketball team held its annual media day Monday afternoon, suiting up for interviews and pictures before running through an open practice. As you’d expect, the mood was good: These preseason gatherings tend to be optimistic, with players and coaches focused on the season’s potential and a schedule loaded with winnable games. But even by those standards, these Nittany Lions seem like an especially positive and confident bunch. That’s encouraging, and perhaps a little surprising.
Last season, (more…)
Garden Party: A Night with the NIT Champs
If you weren’t there, I hope you watched the game on TV, or at least saw the highlights (ESPN has a terrific game wrap-up here). If you were at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, you know what a great night it was. In front of what might as well have been a home crowd, Penn State won its first ever postseason championship, beating Baylor 69-63 for the National Invitational Tournament title.
I was not aboard one of the 35 or 36 buses that left State College on Thursday afternoon, but I did make the trip by car. It was well worth it, particularly since I was able to blur the fan/credentialed-media line during the game. In the first half, I sat in my baseline press seat and tried to act like a professional (read: no cheering). Here’s the view from my courtside perch; all those white t-shirts should give you an idea of the terrific fan support. (click for larger view)
At halftime, I hooked up with some friends in the crowd, tucked my credential in my shirt pocket and switched to fan status — I’m not taking sole credit for Penn State turning a four-point halftime deficit into a six-point win, but, you know…
I did keep the camera handy, though — novice photographer that I am, the quality of some of these is dodgy, but you get the idea. Here’s the view from our seats:
Another guy who I assume didn’t take the bus to Manhattan was native New Yorker Joe Paterno. Just as he did during Tuesday’s semifinal, JoePa sat a few rows behind the Penn State bench. He was also the game’s biggest halftime attraction, being mobbed by well-wishers and folks with cameras during the intermission.
The student support was the real story in the stands. Official attendance for Thursday’s final was 10,254, close to 9,000 of whom were cheering on the Nittany Lions. The students who made the trip — and most of them made two SC-to-NY roundtrips in the space of 48 hours — were their usual rowdy selves. Among the most loyal members of Nittany Nation are a bunch of the Paternoville regulars I met while reporting the cover story for our Jan/Feb issue. I saw a few of them Thursday:
I’ve been to hundreds of games at the Garden (in my previous life as an editor at Slam Magazine, it was part of the job), and I don’t ever remember the stands shaking. But last night, when the students bounced to “Zombie Nation,” I found myself worrying about structural integrity. Very cool.
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It’s probably impossible to overstate how cool it was to see Jamelle Cornley end his Penn State career with a title. The burly but undersized power forward led the Nittany Lions all season (and, really, throughout much of his career) with his toughness and intensity. After finishing with a game-high 18 points and seven rebounds, he was the obvious and thoroughly deserving choice for tournament MVP:
A couple more low-quality shots of ’Mel, worth including (I thought) to give a sense of just how happy everyone was to see him go out on such a high note. He’ll be missed next season.
Postgame, somebody handed Joe an NIT Champs t-shirts, which he put on over his sports coat. (Bonus points if you can ID the bearded gentleman to Paterno’s left — not too many bonus points, though. This one should be easy.)
Pretty close behind Cornley on the people-to-be-happy-for list is head coach Ed DeChellis ’82 Edu. No one knows Penn State’s success-starved hoops history better than Ed — Sports Illustrated recently called his job the toughest in the Big Ten — and while it’s not the NCAA Tournament glory he and his players were hoping for, it was a huge moment nonetheless. Postgame, he looked happy, tired, and proud.
And just when Ed thought his night couldn’t get any better: Taran Buie, the younger brother of star sophomore Talor Battle and one of the top high school juniors in the nation, put the cherry on top Thursday night when he verbally committed to attend Penn State beginning in 2010. Rumor has it that Buie (read more about him here) joined his big brother and their mom on the team bus after the game and announced his plans to the team.
Even in New York City, the stories don’t get much better than that.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
JoePa Hearts New York
There’s been a lot of media coverage this week about the Nittany Lion basketball team in the NIT at Madison Square Garden, but I especially like this piece by the Associated Press, in which Joe Paterno (who attended both the semifinal victory over Notre Dame and last night’s win over Baylor in the title game) reminisces about his younger days in New York City.
Tina Hay, editor
Up Against the NIT
The Schreyer Honors College’s annual Mark Luchinsky Memorial Lecture had the misfortune of being scheduled for 7 p.m. last night—exactly the same time that the Nittany Lions tipped off against Baylor in the NIT championship game at Madison Square Garden. Still, there was a great turnout for the lecture, which featured Penn State vascular surgeon David Han ’88, ’95g talking about the state of health care today.
David, himself a former honors student at Penn State, is the current president of the Penn State Alumni Association. His talk—held at the State Theatre downtown—covered a lot of ground, from the high cost of attending medical school (the average student leaves medical school with more than $140,000 in debt), to the fancy technologies that make surgery today easier and safer, to the likelihood of a substantial physician shortage by the year 2025. The first image, above, shows what medical students today expect their profession will be like in the future. (Click on it to see a bigger version.)
David also lamented that physicians have so little time for one-on-one interactions with patients, and offered some advice on how patients can get the best out of that limited time, as you can see in the second image.
He talked a bit about Mark Luchinsky, the person for whom the annual lecture is named; Luchinsky was a Penn State honors student who died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 20, back in January 1995. David even showed slides explaining what a pulmonary embolus is, and a video showing a high-tech way of treating it—where surgeons send a tiny filter up through a vein to trap the embolism.
After the talk, the folks at the State Theatre replaced David’s PowerPoint slides with the telecast of the NIT game—and we all know how that turned out. Senior editor Ryan Jones drove to New York City yesterday for the game, and I’m sure he’ll have lots to tell when he gets back.
Tina Hay, editor
At Home in The Garden
The semifinals and final of the National Invitational Tournament, college basketball’s oldest postseason tourney, have always been played at Madison Square Garden. Folks watching Tuesday night’s NIT semifinals can be forgiven, though, if they thought Penn State was playing a home game.
Talor Battle has the Nittany Lions one win from the NIT championship.
The terrific turnout of Nittany Lion fans at the Garden last night played a huge role in Penn State’s 67-59 victory over Notre Dame. Some 16 buses left State College Tuesday morning, carrying students who paid $20 each for roundtrip bus fare and a game ticket. Among those in attendance (though I’m guessing they didn’t take the bus) were Lady Lion basketball coach Coquese Washington, women’s volleyball coach Russ Rose, and athletic director Tim Curley ’76, ’78g — all of whom got plenty of ESPN airtime because they were sitting next to Joe Paterno.
JoePa’s presence was a big deal for the broadcast folks, who pulled Joe down for a lengthy courtside interview during the first half. If you missed it, keep an eye out for it on YouTube — it’s classic, unfiltered Paterno. But the ESPN crew also couldn’t say enough about the Penn State fan turnout, showing video of the bus armada leaving State College (sadly also unavailable online, although local station WTAJ did a cool feature that you can see here) and constantly mentioning the support of the students and alumni in attendance — you can read more about the home-game atmosphere in a column by Collegian beat writer Matt Brown.
Word is those $20 bus-and-game tickets will be available again Thursday, when the Nittany Lions hope for a similar turnout — and a similar result — when they face Baylor in the NIT title game. Tip-off is at 7 p.m. on ESPN.
Quick Wednesday afternoon update: I failed to mention that one of the buses that made the Happy Valley-to-Big Apple trek on Tuesday was sponsored by the Alumni Association. My colleague Casey Keiber ’00, ’07g tells me the Association is sponsoring another bus for Thursday’s return trip, to go along with the 18 student buses (!) set to make the trip. Can’t wait to be in the Garden on Thursday night.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Nice Shots from Last Night
Photo by Annemarie Mountz/Penn State Department of Public Information
Photo by Andy Colwell/Penn State Department of Public Information
Annemarie Mountz ’84 and Andy Colwell in Penn State’s Department of Public Information got some good photos at last night’s NIT basketball game between Penn State and George Mason. I especially liked these two—of George Mason’s Louis Birdsong in mid-air against Jamelle Cornley, and of Cornley grimacing in pain after re-injuring his shoulder. You can see these and 10 more here.
Tina Hay, editor
Talor Battle Does it Again
Ryan Jones may have more to say later about last night’s Penn State win in the NIT. But in case you’d like to watch Talor Battle’s three-pointer at the buzzer again—and it sure is fun to watch—there’s a nice video clip of it here.
Tina Hay, editor
Rue 66
One of the best regular seasons in Penn State basketball history wasn’t quite good enough to earn the Nittany Lions an invite to the 2009 NCAA tournament. Fans are lamenting a double-overtime loss at Iowa nine days ago that, if not for a couple of banked-in Iowa three-pointers, would have provided Penn State with an NCAA-clinching victory. The media consensus, meanwhile, focuses on the Nittany Lions’ weak non-conference schedule—something the head of the tournament selection committee echoed after the brackets were announced Sunday night—as the biggest reason Penn State was quite possibly the first team left out of the field of 65.
Not quite Paternoville...
The bright side? It’s not much, but Penn State has at least one more home game to play. The Lions will host George Mason Tuesday night in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. Tip-off is 8 p.m., and the game will be televised nationally by ESPNU. And while Penn State fans certainly would have preferred the Big Dance, at least some of the student faithful were up early Monday morning to grab their NIT tickets.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
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