Penn State Basketball: Pat Chambers shoves final nail into his coffin

Being no stranger to coaching controversy in Happy Valley, Penn State basketball should know when it’s time to cut ties with a toxic coach (hint: it’s now).

Penn State basketball doesn’t exactly have the richest tradition. They’ve been playing the sport at the varsity level since 1896, as long as almost any other school in the country, but have never found sustained success in men’s hoops. They’ve won a single regular season conference championship and one conference tournament, and they’ve only been to the NCAA Tournament nine times despite their Big Ten membership and vast athletic resources.

It’s no wonder, then, that Penn State has allowed Pat Chambers to lead the school to consistent mediocrity since he took over in 2011, just a few months after their most recent NCAA tournament appearance. While Penn State fans have become restless about James Franklin, a coach that helped rebuild the school’s shattered football reputation and guided them through part of the darkest period in the football program’s history, the calls for Pat Chambers to be removed have been few and far between.

And getting players to play for him hasn’t been the problem for Chambers in recent years. He’s made a shocking amount of noise in Philadelphia, creating a strong pipeline with Roman Catholic High School, one of the top basketball powers in the Delaware Valley. From there, he found his three leading scorers from last year’s NIT championship team: Lamar Stevens, Shep Garner, and Tony Carr, who left after his sophomore season to pursue a pro career. Seth Lundy, a 2019 product out of Roman, is signed to Penn State, but I’m sure his future will be in doubt if Chambers isn’t returning to coach the Nittany Lions next year.

But Chambers has never quite been able to find a winning formula with Penn State. Only twice have the Lions finished over .500 since he took over, not once in Big Ten play. Their best record in the conference was the 9-9 they posted a season ago behind Tony Carr’s nearly 20 points per game. It seemed that an occasional NIT run and consistent 4, 6, 7 win Big Ten seasons were enough, and Chambers was satisfying the limited expectations Penn State has for men’s basketball.

That was until Thursday night when Chambers accosted a players’ huddle to shove freshman Myles Dread during a first-half timeout. His explosive episode, which included aggressive shouting before and after targeting Dread, has been met with immediate criticism from both within and outside of the Penn State sphere. He apologized in his post-game press conference.

The problems with his behavior go beyond the inappropriate contact he made with a young man; sure, shoving a player that’s 18 or 19-years-old is an issue in and of itself, but it indicates that Chambers isn’t getting through to his players or effectively teaching these kids what he feels needs to be taught. His methods aren’t working. That’s shown in the box score, with losses to schools like Bradley and DePaul this season, it shows in his history of remarkable underachievement, and it showed during this ugly incident on Thursday night.

It’s long past due for Penn State to make a change. They made a mistake in extending Chambers in May, and a one-game suspension is severely inadequate. Someone else needs to be running the program. Even in a place where phrases like “I’m just not a basketball fan” resonate from Beaver Stadium to Old Main, PSU’s athletic department has to be proactive in making the right moves to assure its basketball program doesn’t slip deeper into the depths of Big Ten obscurity.