UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State head coach Mike Rhoades knew his team needed to get longer and faster this off-season after a 2023-2024 campaign that saw extensive guard play and minimal post play.
To do that, Rhoades and his coaching staff hit the portal hard and the second-year coach at Penn State expects it to result in an improved presence on the glass, an area of weakness last year.
“We wanted to recruit that and be a better rebounding team,” Rhoades said. “I think that will improve our defense tremendously. In our numbers. We got to rebound as a team better. Getting some bigger, more athletic guys definitely should help, but they got to go get the ball.”
It should be no surprise then that Rhoades went out and got three players in the portal 6-foot-8 and up to help him achieve those goals. He got Yanic Konan Niederhauser, a 7-foot forward from Northern Illinois, Kachi Nzeh, a 6-foot-8 forward from Xavier and Eli Rice, a 6-foot-8 forward from Nebraska.
“I love big guys that can really move and you know, you can press with them and play differently on defense, but the offensive side of it versatile for big guys and pull people away from the basket,” Rhoades said. “It just gives you more opportunity for different things.”
Nzeh is no stranger to a faster paced version of basketball having played an up-tempo style while at Xavier. Nzeh appeared in 19 games as a freshman for Xavier last year and averaged 2.5 points per game.
“We played really fast. Here, Rhoades wants to play faster,” Nzeh said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we played faster than I did at the Xavier, just because we have the guys, we have the athletes this year. Definitely getting used to it in terms of my conditioning, because he is emphasizing playing fast.”
There were options for Rhoades last year, but depth was not something Penn State excelled at in his first year at the helm of the program. It should allow Rhoades and company to go deep on the bench to use their guys, but also get more guys on the floor to keep guys fresh.
“We have options, where last year, some of that was really we always have options, but we didn’t have much depth, so we were trying to make some decisions to prolong the game and our players,” Rhoades said. “I think this year we have more depth, so we can play big longer, we could play small longer. I think we could play three handlers, because some of our handlers are bigger now so that’s the neat thing right now, in just our second year here, that we could play with a lot of versatility.”
That versatility is going to be needed with the additions the Big Ten conference has made with the likes of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington joining the conference. Penn State’s depth will be tested given the travel schedule, but on paper it looks like Rhoades has a squad equipped to handle it.
