The Penn State men’s basketball team, coached by former Lebanon Valley College star Mike Rhoades, will play an exhibition game against Lafayette at LVC on Friday, Oct. 25. Game time is 8 p.m.
Rhoades, who is entering his second year at PSU after previous head-coaching stints at Virginia Commonwealth, Rice and Randolph-Macon, said in a phone interview Monday that his original intention was to play the game at Martz Hall in Pottsville, not far from his hometown of Mahanoy City.
He then learned, however, that NCAA rules prohibit exhibitions from being played on high school campuses.
“You can do that for a regular-season game, but not an exhibition game,” he said. “How ‘bout that sense?”
As a result he contacted Lebanon Valley officials, and they were receptive.
“We wanted to make it a road game for our guys – like a dress rehearsal of a road game,” he said. “And I want to get in Central Pennsylvania as much as I can.”
The idea being to give his program as much exposure as possible. He specifically mentioned the possibility of playing in Hershey at some point in the future, but will likely explore other possibilities as well.
“The day of my (introductory) press conference, I said we’ve got to think outside the box to promote Penn State basketball, for people to see that we’re not messing around,” Rhoades said. “We want to be bold, different and aggressive. That’s what I said from Day One. Scheduling is part of it. We have so many alums and so many fans in the Middle Atlantic Region. Why not go to them? Especially at certain times of the year.”
LVC coach Brad McAlester said he is “extremely excited” that the school is hosting the Oct. 25 event – “not only myself, but the college and the basketball team.”
“Mike is coming back to play at his alma mater,” he added, “and it’s special. … It’s a major event.”
McAlester said that while tickets have yet to go on sale, that is expected to occur in the near future. And all proceeds from the game will go to charity.
Rhoades, a 1995 LVC graduate, played his final collegiate season for McAlester, after leading the Pat Flannery-coached Dutchmen to the NCAA Division III championship in 1993-94. Rhoades’ 2,050 career points, a school record at the conclusion of his career, now rank third on the all-time scoring list, behind Andy Panko (2,515) and Sam Light (2,097).
Rhoades began his coaching career as an assistant at Randolph-Macon in 1996, a position he held for three years before inheriting the top job following the retirement of Hal Nunnally in 1999. Rhoades went 197-76 in 10 years there, then spent five years as an associate head coach under Shaka Smart at VCU, a stint highlighted by a Final Four appearance in 2010-11.
In 2014 he began a three-year run as the head coach at Rice, going 47-52, before returning to VCU as the head man. He lasted six years and compiled a 129-61 record, then moved on to Penn State, where he went 16-17 last season.
In all the 52-year-old Rhoades is 389-206 as a head coach.
While Rhoades did not play in LVC’s Sports Center – he performed in the cozy confines of Lynch Gym, which has since been converted to an academic building – he did coach in a tournament there, while at Randolph-Macon.
“It’s not the same gym,” he said, “so just to be on campus will be really cool. I’m sure there will be a lot of familiar faces and there’s a lot of Penn State fans in Central Pa., so that will be really cool. … We wanted to do a road game, but not too far, so our guys could get back on campus and we could get rolling to the next thing. That works out great. To be back with people at Lebanon Valley will be a lot of fun.”
The game is a preamble to an ambitious Nittany Lions regular-season schedule. On Nov. 15 in Baltimore, they will face Virginia Tech, which features another former LVC star (and former Rhoades assistant), J.D. Byers, on its coaching staff. Ten days later, PSU meets Fordham at the Sunshine Slam in Daytona Beach, Fla., and will play either San Francisco or Clemson in that same event the following day.
Then, on Dec. 21, the Lions square off with Drexel in the Sixers’ home arena, which most recently was known as the Wells Fargo Center.
There is also a date with Indiana on Jan. 5 in the storied Palestra in Philadelphia, in addition to the Big Ten fare – some of it standard, some of it not, considering the conference’s expansion. Particularly notable are road games against league newcomers UCLA and USC on Feb. 8 and Feb. 11, respectively.
As for Lafayette, the Leopards went 11-21 last season, their first under head coach Mike McGarvey, the former Ursinus star.
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