AD Barbour: Penn State plans to hire men’s basketball coach immediately following season
Penn State Athletic Director Sandy Barbour has a plan in place for hiring the next Penn State men’s basketball head coach. The plan, according to Barbour, is to have a new head coach in place as soon as the season ends.
“In terms of vetting candidates and developing our list and kind of getting ahead of the game, we’ve been doing that,” Barbour said on video call with the media Tuesday afternoon. “So the plan would be to name a head coach immediately following the conclusion of our Penn State men’s basketball season.”
The position has been open since October when former head coach Pat Chambers resigned following an internal investigation by the athletic department. Since then, former assistant Jim Ferry has been the team’s interim head coach and has led the program to a 5-6 record overall and a 2-4 record in the Big Ten.
Barbour was complimentary of the job Ferry has done in just over three months in the role and said he’s had a hands-on audition.
“My evaluation of Coach Ferry has really been outstanding,” Barbour said. “He stepped into a difficult situation. The Big Ten is an absolute beast. ... In terms of managing the great young men in our program, he gets stellar grades. Certainly we had a little bit of a losing streak there, but you’ve got to give the guys and you’ve got to give Jim a lot of credit for keeping the faith, keeping the confidence. We’ve got two (conference) wins under our belt and certainly look to see what we can continue to do.”
While he’s had the chance to prove his worth on the job — and according to Barbour has stated his interest in taking it — the athletic director said she won’t make a decision on his candidacy until the season is over, and will look for several key attributes in the next head coach.
“In terms of metrics there certainly are some on-court metrics in terms of how teams play and style and those kinds of things,” Barbour said. “And I’m certainly relying on experts around some of that. My biggest contribution, if you will, is really looking at fit. Fit for Penn State, fit for our students, our expectations for coaches around being educators and how they work with and help our students develop and grow. In the end we’ll put all that together and figure out who the best candidate is.”
Ferry and his team will next take the court Wednesday night when they travel to Columbus to take on No. 15 Ohio State in a conference matchup.
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 4:20 PM.
