Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 18 programs after adding Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington

15. Penn State

While recent actions are certainly taken into account, this article is looking at the future more than the immediate past. That’s unfortunately for Penn State, because the Nittany Lions are coming off one of their finest seasons in a long time. Second-year head coach Micah Shrewsberry recruited All-American Jalen Pickett and led the Nittany Lions to a fantastic ending to the season, including an opening round victory in the NCAA Tournament.

That 23-win season was just the tenth trip to the Big Dance in Penn State’s history and their first appearance in 2011. Unfortunately, both Shrewsberry and Pickett are gone, as are a few other talented pieces both from the roster and the coaching staff from last season. With the current state of the Transfer Portal, it’s even harder to build sustained success in college basketball, especially at a program like Penn State.

The Nittany Lions are not known for sustained success and are much more regularly found in the NIT or outside the postseason altogether. This program has actually fared a lot better than you might think; they very rarely bottom out and usually scrape together a number of wins in conference play, but the Big Ten is getting even harder with teams like UCLA dotting their schedule in the future.

New head coach Mike Rhoades has been a winner at VCU and certainly has the coaching talent to win games at Penn State, but is that enough? It feels in many ways like Penn State caught lightning in a bottle with Pickett; they simply don’t get players that talented in University Park on a regular basis, even in the Big Ten. There’s no question that the program is in decent shape, winning at least 21 games in three of the last six seasons, but can that continue on a regular basis?