Catching up With…

One of the regular features I have planned for this blog are interviews with different types of alumni. With so much going on with the men’s basketball team, I thought it was best to kick off this segment by talking to Philadelphia Daily News columnist Howard Gensler, one of the biggest Penn basketball fans around.

By his estimation, Gensler has been to over 500 Penn games in 28 different states, traveling as far as Texas by car to see the Quakers play. And he knows his stuff. When I read his comments on the message boards, I often find myself nodding in agreement.

So after head coach Glen Miller was fired earlier this week and replaced with Jerome Allen, I sought out Gensler to be the voice of reason through the cacophony of commentary and opinions from so-called “experts.” I’d pay attention to him:

PENN GAZETTE SPORTS: So, like Jerome Allen, I bet your phone has been ringing off the hook the past few days?

HOWARD GENSLER: Yeah, it’s certainly a hot topic amongst Penn basketball fans.

PGS: As one of the biggest Penn basketball fans, what are your thoughts about the last few days?

HG: I think it was a bold move. I think it was a move that needed to happen. And I think it’s a move that will rally Penn supporters behind Jerome.

PGS: Based on the people you’ve talked to, what are most other Penn fans saying?

HG: I think people are really excited to change the storyline. It’s always risky promoting an assistant coach to head coach, no matter who the assistant coach is. There are some who work out brilliantly well and some who don’t. You never really know who are going to be the good ones and who are going to be the bad ones. The two most logical coaching hires in the Ivy League over the last 30 years were probably Craig Littlepage at Penn and Joe Scott at Princeton. Joe Scott at Princeton was a disaster. Craig Littlepage was not a disaster but he wasn’t a huge success. And those hires made total sense.  … It’s weird sometimes. You can’t always predict these things. Jerome Allen could turn out to be a tremendous head basketball coach, and there is the slim possibility that he won’t. But everyone likes the guy, he’s got a tremendous story to tell and we’re all pulling for him.

PGS: Did you have a sense this was coming?

HG: That’s a tough question. I thought there was a possibility Coach Miller would be let go. I was pretty surprised by the news it was Coach Allen.

PGS: You thought it would be John Gallagher?

HG: Well, I thought if Steve Bilsky let Coach Miller go in the middle of season, Coach Gallagher was the safer hire. This is a bold move. But it could pay tremendous dividends.

PGS: A lot of people in the national media seem to be almost chastising Penn for firing a coach midseason. Do you think the move was rash or necessary?

HG: Oh, those guys can go pound sand. There are many people who believe this should have happened at end of last year. If it had happened at the end of last year, there would have been many more options. Steve Bilsky gave Coach Miller a chance after last season’s team was decimated by injuries. Even though there are injury problems this year also, there were other problems that Bilsky alluded to that were not being corrected. It’s not just the wins and losses. I am as confident as could be that if the team was 0-7 but the other circumstances were different, Coach Miller would still be the Penn coach. I mean, Coach Dunphy started a season 0-8 and there was no real move to get rid of him. It was a lot of the other stuff. Therefore, when these national guys who couldn’t care less about Penn 99 percent of the time start opining on what Penn should have done when they don’t know anything about the situation, it’s just lame. They’re just filling up space.

PGS: What were the problem besides the wins and losses?

HG: Being a head basketball coach in college, you have to appease a lot of constituencies. You’ve got players, you’ve got parents, you’ve got alumni, you’ve got basic fans, you’ve got the media, and you’ve got the serious donors. And I don’t think Coach Miller’s strongest suit was appealing to those constituencies.

PGS: What was your relationship with Glen Miller personally? Did he ever endear himself to any of the most passionate fans?

HG: I thought when you caught Coach Miller one-on-one out of season, he could talk basketball with the best of them and he was a pretty ingratiating guy. But there’s a lot more to it than that. And I think there was a lot of pressure on him here following Coach Dunphy, who was wildly successful and incredibly popular. I don’t think he was a particularly good fit and I don’t think he made the effort to make himself a good fit. I think people were certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

PGS: Was there a point when you lost faith in his leadership?

HG: When you travel to a lot of games, you frequently sit with parents and you sort of get to know them over the years. Some are very chatty and some aren’t. I think that there were a number of signs fairly early that this was going to be a little rocky. And certainly over the past year-and-a-half those signs became much more apparent

PGS: In general, the parents didn’t seem to like him? Was there a certain reason for that?

HG: I think kids playing college sports have changed a lot over the past 20 years, from the time that Coach Miller started in business. We live in a 24-hour news cycle with anonymous Internet posts going on constantly. And the players today have cell phones and e-mail and they’re constantly in touch with their parents and everyone else on Facebook pages. I’m not making a value judgment here; I’m just saying it’s changed. … And I just don’t think Coach Miller dealt with that well.

PGS: Is there a part of you that thinks that things could have been different if more guys were able stay healthy?

HG: I think injuries were huge. He definitely had a lot of bad luck, there’s no question about that. But you’ve got to deal with those situations. There was a year, I think it was ’96, when Penn had basically one point guard on the team and he got hurt early in the season. So the team had to manufacture a point guard and they took Ira Bowman, who was their best all-around player, and they had to make him the point guard because they didn’t have a choice. And that team ended up co-sharing the championship. Sometimes things don’t work out that well, and you’ve got to deal. Certainly the loss of (Tyler) Bernardini is a huge loss. To me, the bigger problem was that there was nobody in the freshman class this year that the coach had confidence in to play when he needed to play them.

PGS: Is this the emptiest you’ve ever seen the Palestra? Did you ever think it would get to this point?

HG: I’ve never really thought about it like that. But I thought the Albany game was about as empty as I can recall.

PGS: Do you think the students will come back the same way they one did?

HG: If you go a few years without winning, the students aren’t accustomed to coming and they sort of stop learning how to be fans. If the team wins and the team is exciting and the team’s good, students will come. They may not come to the level the St. Joe’s fans come, but they’ll come and alumni will come because it’s exciting. It’s a cold Friday night in February – there just aren’t that many things to do that are affordable and exciting. A Penn game at the Palestra, if the team’s good and maybe the other team they’re playing is good, is fun.

PGS: How much did you like Jerome Allen as a player?

HG: I don’t really look at it that way. Even though some people make fun of me, I don’t really romanticize players that way. Jerome was a tremendous player at Penn and the team was fun to watch. He gave us a lot of thrills over four years. I remember him hitting back-to-back 3s against Alabama in an NCAA tournament game that I think sent the game to overtime. It was incredibly exciting.

PGS: What do you think it will take for him to keep the job on a full-time basis?

HG: For me personally, I think the key things Jerome needs to do is change the mood, get the team to play harder and play defense and try to salvage the recruiting class. If he accomplishes those things, that would be a lot. I don’t know how many games they can win. Can they challenge Cornell or Harvard? I don’t know, I’d like to think they can. But right now, they’re 0-7. It’s hard to say they’ll be that good.

PGS: Are you confident this program can turn things around as early as next season?

HG: Yes. I think they’ll turn things around this season but it may not reflect until next season. You know, like when Jerome was a freshman, the team started to turn around. They didn’t win until the following year but they were certainly getting better that year. There are some pieces missing from this team that may be on the roster and Coach Allen might find them or they may not be on the roster and we’ll have to wait a year for them to come in. …  I think they’ve played hard at times, I don’t think they’ve played passionately. Jerome’s teams played hard and passionately. They weren’t always the most talented team, but when you played against Penn in those days, you weren’t thinking some wussy Ivy League team. They battled you until the bitter end.