'We Don't Want to Be a Flash in the Pan,' Penn State's Mike Rhoades Says
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. | There’s some buzz, along with plenty of unknowns, this year around a Penn State men's basketball with a new coach and 10 new players. And that coach, Mike Rhoades, looks to bring stability to a program that has seen plenty of inconsistency for a while.
“I am locked in. We have a lot of things we need to do to make this program better. Some of it's short term, some of it's long term,” Rhoades said. “I'm in it for the long haul. I'm excited about that. And I said this from the first day I got here, we're gonna build this to last. We don't just want to be a flash in the pan, we want to build it to last."
Rhoades took over Penn State's program after Micah Shrewsberry injected hope by winning an NCAA Tournament game last season. Then he left, cutting his Penn State tenure short in favor of Notre Dame and a chance to return to his home state for a program bought into basketball following Penn State's too-little, too-late attempt to keep him.
What says Rhoades won’t do something similar? He does, for a lot of reasons he dug into Monday.
“I’m here. … If you look at the contract, [you'll] see how I want to be here for a long time, lucky to have to be at a place like Penn State,” Rhoades said at the Nittany Lions media day at the Bryce Jordan Center. "With the administration, I came here because of the belief [Athletic Director] Pat Kraft has in Penn State, the belief he had and coming after me and the alignment of our President and our Director of Athletics. That, to me, that was huge.
"I knew a lot about Penn State. I knew more about Penn State than a lot of people. But talking to Pat and his team just had me so excited about the possibilities of what we can do.”
After six seasons at VCU with a .679 win percentage and three NCAA Tournament appearances, Rhoades looks to be the next in a line of Rams coaches who have moved up in the NCAA ranks and found success. He has a motto to build his program toward success: win the day. Doing so at Penn State would have extra meaning for Rhoades, whose recent move is a true homecoming.
“I've seen my mom in the last six months more than I ever have since I got in this crazy business," said Rhoades, whose hometown of Manahoy City is about two hours from Penn State. "That's been a lot of fun. Now there's a lot of people in Schuylkill County coming up here the last six months that haven't. I don't know if that's good for Centre County or not, but it's been really cool to have everybody from home be a part of this."
When Rhoades said he knew a lot about Penn State, it included having watched the Nittany Lions on TV 30 years ago. He recalled sitting in his dorm room at Lebanon Valley College watching Penn State get “screwed” in a loss to Indiana at Rec Hall. The Lions return to Rec Hall in February for the first time since 2015.
“I remember seeing a game when I was a little kid. My dad brought me up to a game here. I think we played Temple. I was little, but I just remember that,” Rhoades said. “Rec Hall's a pretty cool place. Then seeing some of the pictures from the other sports there and how packed it is, what a cool, old-school vibe it has. Let's see if we could do that. Why not? Let's give it a shot.”
In a roughly 20-minute practice viewing window Monday, Rhoades stopped drills often. He yelled “Faster! Faster!” or “Don’t quit on the play!” A few players, notably VCU transfer Nick Kern Jr., stayed in drills voluntarily until they did it right. Players mentioned Rhoades’ intensity a number of times as a reason for transferring into or staying at Penn State this offseason.
Rhoades cleared his first hurdle as Penn State’s coach in the offseason, filling a roster that returned just three scholarship players from 2022-23. Rhoades had recruited many of his newcomers, nine transfers and one first-year recruit, out of high school. Having those prior relationships recalls one of the main keys Rhoades drove home Monday: treating this job like family.
“When I became a head coach at 25, [my wife] Jodie and I were engaged. Jodie was 24. She said to me, 'If this is what we're going to do for the rest of our lives, let's make it about everybody and make this a big family.' She said it,” Rhoades said. “It was the best piece of advice I got because we made it more than basketball everywhere we've been on this crazy journey, adventure we have.
"I hope seven years from now, Kanye [Clary] had a great career at Penn State and he has another basketball career, but he can't wait to get back to Penn State to see the coaching staff. … It has nothing to do with basketball.”
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Max Ralph is a Penn State senior studying Broadcast Journalism with minors in sports studies and Japanese. He previously covered Penn State football for two years with The Daily Collegian and has reported with the Associated Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Follow him on Twitter (X) @maxralph_ and Instagram @mralph_59.
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