Patrick Chambers arrives in State College today from Boston. But the campus is hardly a new destination for Penn State’s freshly appointed men’s basketball coach.
Two of Chambers’ brothers and one of his sisters are Penn State graduates. His nephew is a walk-on wide receiver on the Nittany Lions' football team. Chambers described himself as "a Penn State football fan through and through." He also remembers watching basketball games in Rec Hall as well as the Bryce Jordan Center.
So when a coach with even more Penn State ties, Ed DeChellis, surprised many in the Penn State community by announcing that he had accepted the head coaching job at the U.S. Naval Academy two weeks ago, many of Chambers’ relatives — he’s one of 12 children — had a replacement in mind. Chambers, as he recalled Saturday, was intrigued. But he also remembered something Jay Wright, his former boss at Villanova, had told him long ago.
“Jay always said, ‘You can’t pursue jobs. You have to sit back and hope that they call you,’” Chambers said during a phone interview with the Centre Daily Times. “Obviously, my family was going crazy. They wanted me to pursue it.”
Penn State athletic director Tim Curley did the pursuing. And by Friday afternoon, Chambers was the Nittany Lions’ 12th men’s coach in the program’s 115-year history. He spent the evening calling the current players and staff members.
“He definitely sounded like a great coach, a great guy, an overall great person,” said junior point guard Tim Frazier, the team’s most experienced returning player. “I came to Penn State because of the family atmosphere. Coach D definitely brought that, and I feel like Coach Chambers is going to bring the same thing.”
The 39-year-old Chambers, who led Boston University to its first NCAA tournament appearance in nine years last winter, just his second season in the program, plans to attack his new job with the same enthusiastic approach.
“We’re going to work hard, have a good time, stay on academics, but the attitude is definitely going to change,” he said. “We’re going to create culture, change the perception into winning and success and have fun doing it.”
Chambers studied under some quality basketball minds throughout his career as a player and coach. He was a point guard at Philadelphia University for Herb Magee, the career college basketball coaching wins leader (Magee had 922 victories, 20 more than compiled by Division I leader Bob Knight). He was an assistant at Episcopal Academy to Dan Dougherty, who coached at Army and won 13 league high school championships. During Chambers’ five seasons with Wright at Villanova, the Wildcats averaged 25 wins and went to the 2009 Final Four.
The differing styles he played and saw at those three stops informed his own coaching style and helped him develop a style of play that varies with personnel.
“Some players weren’t great at sets, so I kept offense simple,” Chambers said. “When we had guys comfortable with sets, we ran more complicated stuff. I’ve always tailor made my offense to the talent on the floor.”
Rarely did Chambers go more than a few minutes Saturday without mentioning the importance of securing top talent. He honed his skills as a recruiter at two programs with very different levels of tradition and prestige.
“At Villanova, you’re looking at pros. You know your demographic — the top 50 players, top 75 players in the country,” he said. “At BU, you have to find needles in the haystacks, guys who were maybe overlooked by other programs. For the most part, that’s what happened.”
Chambers’ goal is to attract players from the first group to central Pennsylvania.
“I want to see us bring in one or two (future) pros every couple years,” he said. “Find one or two big-time players, then surround them with some really good basketball players.”
Chambers will meet the media on Monday, when he will be formally introduced at a 2:30 p.m. news conference in the Bryce Jordan Center. His next task is to fill out his coaching staff.
“I want to talk to the guys that are currently there, but I also want to be loyal to the guys that have been with me the last few years,” Chambers said. “That’s a delicate balance. I want to talk to some veteran guys, guys who can really recruit the northeast and Ohio. … When it comes to staffs, you’ve got to put together a good staff that’s cohesive and has good chemistry. You don’t want people who are there doing their own thing.”
The new staff will inherit what will be one of the Big Ten’s youngest and most inexperienced rosters. But its players are just as excited as many Penn State fans to see what the new coach is capable of in a place he visited so many times during his youth.
“I can’t wait to get back to State College,” Frazier said. “I’m counting down the days.”
