DeChellis challenges team’s leaders

Jeff Rice

Penn State’s coaches and returning players held a team meeting last week. It was what wasn’t said by a couple of unnamed players that bothered head coach Ed DeChellis.

“I thought they had an opportunity to exert their leadership and they didn’t do it,” he said.

DeChellis called the players into his office early the next morning and reminded them that more than distribution of points will change next season.

The Nittany Lions return all but three players from their regular rotation in 2009-10, but those three players — forward Jamelle Cornley and guards Stanley Pringle and Danny Morrissey — will leave tremendous tangible and intangible voids as Penn State looks to sustain the momentum from its 10-3 finish and NIT championship.

“I think the leadership thing is what I’m most concerned about,” DeChellis said Thursday. “Other guys have to step up now; they’ll be the guys that people will be looking towards. The on the floor stuff, that kind of works itself out — what you can do, how you’re going to score and defend, who you’re going to go to to get a basket at crunch time.

“Basketball, I think will sort itself out. I’m more concerned with the intangibles, the toughness, bringing it at practice very day, the locker room, the leadership, and that’s what we started working on as soon as the season’s over.”

Morrissey, the oldest and most experienced player on the team this season, helped mentor the younger guards and fired up his teammates by sacrificing his body all year. Pringle helped set Penn State’s defensive tone and tempo. But no player meant as much to the Nittany Lions this season as Cornley, who drove his teammates hard through wins, losses, practices and offseason workouts.

“Jamelle was everything as far as leadership,” point guard Talor Battle said.

Battle, too, was far more assertive during his sophomore season. His superb production — a Big Ten-leading 635 points, a team record 189 assists — was complemented by

an unbridled confidence that began to rub off on teammates as the season went on. He and Cornley shared team MVP honors at Friday's banquet for more than just their statistics.

But Battle won’t be able to lead his team alone next season, and he knows it.

“Guys are emerging,” he said Thursday. “And I think as the summer and the season comes along, someone will step up and I think people will know who the leaders are on the basketball team.”

The Nittany Lions will have no scholarship seniors next season, but the leadership is most likely to come from a deep junior class, particularly fourth-year juniors David Jackson and Andrew Jones, who joined Battle, Pringle and Cornley in the starting lineup this season.

“The most important person out of that group is David Jackson, to me, because he understands the game and knows what he needs to do in order for the team to be successful,” Cornley said. “I think that Drew (Jones) has really stepped up and led by example. He’ll have to be more vocal. But it’s hard to perform well at a high level and be a vocal leader. There’s going to be times when they’ll have to step up and do both.

“I think the maturity level of Chris Babb and Jeff Brooks is going to be important to the teams’ success,” Cornley added. “And their ability to help the leaders be leaders.”

What made Cornley so effective as a leader was that he worked hard to learn and understand his teammates’ unique moods and personalities. He also knew that it would be impossible to lead teammates who didn’t want to be led. What made the Nittany Lions a better team than the sum of their individual parts was that every player understood his role.

They hope to have new roles defined by November.

“I don’t think you just anoint someone a leader,” DeChellis said. “I think leaders develop and they emerge, and guys that are playing with confidence and have played minutes will step up into those roles. You need guys who are willing to follow as well, and I thought our other guys did a good job of following the lead. You can have guys who want to lead, but if the other guys are always resistant, it doesn’t work as well.”