What’s PSU’s future in recruiting, transfer portal?

The future of Penn State basketball is very much a mystery for a lot of reasons, and one of the most important is how the program will be able to handle recruiting given the double whammy of having an interim head coach and also being in the midst of the COVID pandemic.

Oh, and don’t forget about the new transfer rules, which promise to change college basketball in ways that we’ve never seen before.

Penn State interim coach Jim Ferry was asked about those two components Saturday afternoon, as the Nittany Lions prepare to host No. 6 Wisconsin on Sunday at noon.

First came a question about recruiting during such a unique situation. The Lions currently have no commits during the current recruiting cycle, but have had three players decommit since Patrick Chambers resigned in late October.

“It’s a very, very unique situation,” Ferry said. “The pandemic and just the recruiting rules are different now. So we’re still working at it every day, we recruit every day. We have some kids that are very interested in (PSU).

“You sell the university. Penn State is an unbelievable place. It is a great place. I’ve had two daughters graduate from here, so I’m a diehard, I’m a Penn State dad. There’s so much great about this place. We sell the program, we sell the success of the program. We still have good basketball here. And I just sell the vision of what I can project and what we have here.

“I’m an honest guy, I sell what I know and what I’ve lived. And the stuff that I’ve lived here has been great about this place. So, you get the right people that have the right interest for the right reasons, and you can continue to recruit them. And then as time moves forward, we’ll see where everything’s at.”

A big part of the path moving forward will be the explosion of the transfer portal. Just as in football, the NCAA is about to pass legislation that will allow college basketball players to transfer one time and be immediately eligible elsewhere, without having to sit out a year.

Now, one main point here is that transfers