Coach Patrick Chambers still hurting over seeing the abrupt end of Penn State’s excellent basketball season
The Newtown Square native met twice with his team on March 12 to discuss cancellations of the Big Ten and NCAA Tournament hours apart. "That will stay with me for the rest of my life," he said.
It might have been the worst day of Patrick Chambers’ career of coaching basketball.
Just hours after he had met with his Penn State players to tell them the Big Ten Tournament had been terminated due to fears over the coronavirus pandemic, he had to speak to them again about the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament and a sudden end to the Nittany Lions’ excellent season.
“To deliver that news was horrible, it was devastating,” Chambers, a native of Newtown Square, recalled Friday in a conference call with reporters. “Guys were crying, guys’ heads were down. You try to put a comparison to it, but these guys were young and they weren’t around for 9-11. So really, there was no comparison. You just had to deliver the news and try to comfort them.
“There was a lot of hugging, a lot of appreciation, a lot of love because of the season that we had just had. But there were still so many questions and you could see everybody was just numb, didn’t really know how to react. That will stay with me for the rest of my life, this experience and delivering that news during those two meetings.”
Chambers felt gutted for many reasons on March 12. The Nittany Lions were preparing to play Indiana in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament seeking to build on their 21-10 record and perhaps improve their seed in the NCAA Tournament, their first appearance since 2011.
The dual cancellations also meant the abrupt conclusion to the career of star forward Lamar Stevens, a Roman Catholic High graduate who was deprived of a chance to play in his first NCAA Tournament game. Worse yet, Stevens needed just seven more points to become the program’s all-time leading scorer.
“I’m so proud of what Lamar Stevens has done for this program and where he’s put this program on a national level,” Chambers said. “I can’t thank him enough for everything he’s done. My heart aches for him not to play in the Big Ten Tournament or the NCAA Tournament, or be on the Selection Show.
“To have it end so abruptly is really tough to swallow. But he’s an amazing individual. In my opinion, he’s got to go down as one of the greatest players, if not the greatest player, in Penn State history.”
Stevens, named first-team All-Big Ten for the second straight year, finished his career with 2,207 points. He could have topped Talor Battle’s record of 2,213 in Penn State’s first Big Ten Tournament contest.
Chambers, one of 10 semifinalists for the Naismith coach of the year award, said he was disappointed that the NCAA did not conduct a Selection Sunday show and release a bracket. NCAA officials said they didn’t think it was fair to put out brackets when seasons were incomplete and 19 conference tournaments were either unfinished or hadn’t started.
“Right now, I’m still in a little bit of a grieving phase, but I do have to be the leader of this program,” Chambers said. “I sent out a letter last Sunday about where we would have been at 6 o’clock that day and how we would have spent our time enjoying that moment, but things changed. It’s a great reminder that nothing’s guaranteed, not tomorrow, not an hour from now, not the NCAA Tournament, not the selection show. But there’s so many lessons to learn here."
Then, referring to a 2002 incident in Center City, he added, "Look, I was stabbed, so I always go back to that tragedy and think I could have been dead, and I was given a second chance. So there are blessings, there are rebirths, from tragedies and setbacks. How we teach that, and how we advise and guide these young men is going to be vital when we get some normalcy going here, hopefully in the short future.”