Penn State basketball enters critical point with coaching search

The life of a Penn State basketball fan has been a painful experience for many supporters of the program over the years. And just as it seemed the program was about to hit a turning point in favor of more regular success instead of waiting a decade for a shot at experiencing the NCAA tournament, Penn State once again finds itself at a potential critical fork in the road. The departure of head coach Micah Shrewsberry, who reportedly agreed to a lengthy contract at Notre Dame after two seasons in Happy Valley, leaves Penn State in a position of need for a head coach who can continue down the path Shrewsberry was paving without having to take a major detour.

Whoever becomes the next head coach of the Nittany Lions will have a good amount of work to do right off the bat. Seth Lundy declared for the NBA draft. A pair of players entered the transfer portal. And Jalen Pickett, Andrew Funk, and Myles Dread are key players departing the program as well. The transfer portal can ease the pressure with the right conversations and decisions being made with the roster, just as Shrewsberry did right from the start of his brief tenure in State College.

But the real work will have to be done on the recruiting trail, which is a bit more difficult to start given the timing of everything. And the possibility Shrewsberry will lure any top targets to South Bend after initially working on them for Penn State is a real possibility to consider.

Ultimately, what Penn State athletics director Pat Kraft is tasked with doing is not necessarily finding the big splash hire for the sake of generating headlines, but finding the right coach for the job. Players have already voiced their support for Adam Fisher, one of Penn State’s top assistant coaches under Shrewsberry and a former assistant at Villanova and Miami. This turns out being the first major hire for Kraft since being named the school’s athletics director in succeeding Sandy Barbour, who brought Shrewsberry to Penn State.

If you need to have some confidence in Kraft’s ability to identify a good coaching candidate, take a look at some of his notable hires at previous stops. He hired Matt Rhule to be the head football coach at Temple in 2013, and it’s pretty safe to say that worked out pretty well for all parties involved. After Rhule left Temple for Baylor, Kraft hired Geoff Collins to keep things going with the OPwls program, resulting in back-to-back winning seasons. He did hire Rod Carey to be Temple’s next…