Penn State guard Kanye Clary 'no longer with the team' according to Mike Rhoades

Penn State hoops took a blow on Monday when first-year head coach Mike Rhoades announced that 2023-24 lead scorer Kanye Clary is no longer with the program.

According to Nate Bauer of BlueWhite Illustrated, Rhoades gave the following comments Monday that Clary had been dismissed from the program:

“Kanye is no longer with the team. Coach’s decision. We’re going to keep moving forward on the guys we got, the task at hand. It came to a point where we’re at that I made the decision as the head coach to move on. I’ll leave it at that.”

Clary struggled with injuries this month and hadn’t been much of a factor lately, scoring zero points in his final performance before missing the most recent PSU game. Now, he is apparently no longer part of the team, per the head coach.

At the time of his departure, Clary is averaging 16.7 points per game to lead all Nittany Lions — and he was just in his sophomore season and ought to have at least two years of eligibility if he transfers and finds another home for next season.

Without him in the lineup, points will be even tougher to come by for a Penn State team that hasn’t been great on the offensive end of the court. That issue has already been illustrated as PSU mustered just 49 total points in a blowout loss to Nebraska over the weekend when they didn’t have Kanye Clary in the lineup.

Frankly, though, this team was already on the far outside of the NCAA Tournament picture, barring a crazy run through the Big 10 Tournament. So they can use the end of the season to give some other younger players a chance to develop heading into next season.

Looking beyond 2024, Ace Baldwin is a senior but appears to have another year to play if he wants it. Qudus Wahab is out of time but behind him, Zach Hicks, Nick Kern, D’Marco Dunn and Puff Johnson are all upperclassmen with another year left to play. That’s a nice little core to head into year two with if Mike Rhoades can keep all of them together.

Of course, he’ll also be able to hit the transfer portal for reinforcements as well, which is something he was forced to do for this season. Still, it’s always nice to have as much continuity as possible, and PSU should at least have some in 2024-25.