Mike Rhoades reaffirms confidence in Penn State being able to win

It has been an up-and-down season for Penn State and head coach Mike Rhoades in his first year leading the program. The Nittany Lions are 12-13 on the year and 6-8 in the Big Ten following a home loss to the Michigan State Spartans.

Despite the ups-and-down play from his team, Rhoades has not wavered in his confidence in what they can do on the court. And that is why, following the loss to Michigan State, the Penn State headman reaffirmed his strong belief in what his team can do and become.

“No,” said Rhoades when asked if it was too late to turn things around this season. “I mean, you guys probably wrote us off, and then we go win at Rutgers and win at Indiana; none of you guys thought we’d win in Indiana. I thought we could. I thought we could have won today. That’s just me; that’s why I took the job. People don’t think we can win here, watch. We will. It’s just gonna be really, really hard, and there’s gonna be a lot of tough decisions, and you’re gonna have some nights like this. I’m built for this, and I’m gonna find dudes that wanna be built for this.”

As pointed out, Penn State does own some quality wins over higher-ranked, more established programs, including a four-point home victory over the No. 20-ranked Wisconsin Badgers. But what is troubling for the Nittany Lions head coach is the lack of consistency his team has shown this season, which she also addressed following the Michigan State game.

“Can we go beat teams? Yeah. But we showed that anyone could beat us, and that’s the frustrating part. I wish we were more consistent; I wish we were mentally tougher. We’re not; at times, we are… we have a couple of days of that good stuff and a couple of days, we revert back,” Rhoades said. “We’ve just got to continue to work through and build it and keep teaching these guys the right way: what’s gonna help win games in the Big Ten consistently.”

Penn State will have an opportunity to write the ship and end their two-game losing streak on Saturday when they travel to Lincoln to take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Following that, Rhoades and company will have ample opportunity to make their case to earn one of these 68 spots in the NCAA men’s championship tournament. But in order to do so, as their head coach pointed out, Penn State will have to find a level of consistency to close out this season.