City of Basketball Love

Michael Bullock (@thebullp_n)
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MIDDLETOWN — Don Friday isn’t about to dwell on what happened last season at Penn State Harrisburg or even the one before that.

Right now, the 47-year-old head coach is only concerned about Year 3 and what he hopes is going to happen during the 2015-16 campaign.

So why not embrace the present?

Particularly since a dozen of the players on his 19-man roster are brand new to a Nittany Lions program — nine freshmen, two junior college products and Wilkes transfer Jourdon Wilson from nearby Cumberland Valley High School — that’s only been on the NCAA Division 3 landscape for some 10 seasons.

A 13th player — York native and senior forward Anthony Morgan — arrived midway through last season from McDaniel College.

“It started with me and my whole idea was painting a picture of being positive and having energy,” said Friday, whose arrival at Penn State Harrisburg coincided with the Lions’ shift from the North Eastern Athletic Conference to the much more demanding Capital Athletic Conference. “What we’ve done with that and we’ve been very careful is … we buried the past.

“What happened last year and the year before, we’ve been careful not to talk about that, ‘cause our new guys here, they don’t know about that. The guys that have stayed, the guys that have continued to battle through some dark days — at least the basketball part of it — those guys don’t want to hear about it either because they’ve come in here and tried to make a change and be better.

“So, we’ve taken this whole approach of it’s all out there in front of us and as you look right now, what we have for the first time since I’ve been here [is] we have competition at every spot,” continued Friday, who had earlier head coaching stops at Lycoming and D-I Saint Francis. “It’s no longer where a guy can look around and kind of deduce, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m gonna play regardless.’

“I think those days are gone. With all these new faces, there’s academic acclimation, there’s handling being away from home, the whole chemistry thing and how we come together. But I’ve got bigger chess pieces to move around the chessboard and I think we can be a lot more strategic.”

Those who had the chance to see the Lions take on Bridgewater (Va.) earlier this week at their Capital Union Building playpen witnessed a highly competitive bunch with plenty of athleticism at every spot and a good bit of size up front that really got after it defensively — regardless of the quintet on the floor.

Friday’s club wasn’t as efficient at the offensive end, but rotating 18 players in and out prevented the Lions from establishing a rhythm and continuity. That’ll come as Penn State Harrisburg settles into a rotation that could be as deep as 12 or 13 when the Lions open the season Nov. 14 against Rutgers-Camden.

“You just take it day by day. You work the kinks out,” said Morgan, who averaged 10.8 points and 6.4 boards per game in his 12 appearances last season with the Lions (3-22). “Every day’s not gonna be perfect, you know that coming in. Every time you have a workout, you’re not gonna make every shot. And that’s one of the byproducts we have, like just get better every day by [doing] something simple.

“If we come in the gym and we get five percent better, we’re getting better and that’s the byproduct that Coach Friday has put in and that’s what a lot of guys are buying into.”

Just having that competitive edge in practice every day was one of the first objectives Friday and assistants Mike Zito and Gary Jurosky hoped to accomplish whenever they wandered on to the recruiting trail and looked at players.

Zito worked the DMV, landing five of the Lions’ 12 newcomers. Jurosky set up shop in Philadelphia, finding five more youngsters.

The early returns have been favorable — Penn State Harrisburg opened preseason camp on Oct. 15 — to the point where Friday & Co. have had to tone it down.

“We knew what we wanted going in,” said Friday, who is 11-39 during his two seasons on the suburban Harrisburg campus. “We wanted to become long, we wanted to become athletic and we wanted to get toughness. That’s what this program needed.”

While Morgan, 6-4 senior Arick Sodini (10.4 ppg) and the electric 5-10 Wilson may have the early lead on starting spots, Howard (Md.) Community College products Jazmon Harris and Austin Chimuma could be the other pieces on the floor when the whistle blows and the ball goes up against Rutgers-Camden.

Harris is a 6-1 junior who can play both guard spots, while the high-motored Chimuma is a 6-5 junior who attacks the glass relentlessly.

“More than anything, I kind of felt like Coach Friday was able to sell me as well as my parents that coming here, more important than basketball, more important than anything else, was that diploma,” said Chimuma, a criminal justice major who is interested in a career in law enforcement. “Hearing that Penn State diploma in the back of my mind, there’s nothing better than that.

“Those job opportunities I feel would just only expand because honestly I see life after college basketball. So that was the biggest thing for me. … If I’m able to feel comfortable with the coaching staff coming into a new program, as well as a teammate of mine, if we feel like we’re coming in together and trying to help out the team and boost up what goes on on campus, we felt like all of the pieces were there. With the coaches, they kind of made it feel like home.”

Other youngsters whom Friday envisions in his early rotation are 6-4 Kahlil Williams and 6-9 Gbolahan Alliyu — both freshmen from Philadelphia’s Central High — and 5-9 freshman guard Davis Luethke from Flint Hill (Va.). Same for returnees Donte Vaughn (3.3 ppg) and Josh Johnson (2.4 ppg), both guards, and forward Winton Lyle (5.6 ppg in 2013-14).

Junior Marquese Daniels (5.1 ppg) — Daniels is a Philly Electrical grad — sophomore Tariq Bennett (8.0 ppg) from nearby Milton Hershey, and freshmen Pat Mulville (Father Judge) and Clinton Asalu (Willingboro, N.J.) are contending for playing time. So are freshmen John Ukpaiama, Ibn-Haneef Nelson (Science Leadership), Nelson Jones and Rodeo Thompson from nearby Hershey.

“[What we’re doing now is we] try not to talk about the past, try not to talk about the future, control what we can control and if we’re doing all the things we need to be doing right now, [we think we’ll be OK],” said Friday, who is extremely grateful to Penn State Harrisburg athletic director and former PSU basketball player Rahsaan Carlton for affording him the opportunity to front the Lions program.

Another plus?

Carlton grew up in suburban Harrisburg before heading to University Park.

“We have a red line,” Friday continued. “What gets you above the red line is handling your business in the classroom, doing the right thing whether it’s 2 in the afternoon or 2 in the morning and being a great teammate who’s going to defend, who’s going to make unselfish plays on the offensive end and give up a good shot for a great shot. Those are the guys that are gonna play. They’re gonna play.”

And all of the players know it.

“It’s the way he comes about it every day. Friday’s a really animated guy,” Morgan said. “One day he might like you, one day he might not.

“But it’s one of those things where you know he’s bringing 110 percent every day, so you’ve got to bring 110 percent. He’s putting in the same work we are. It’s good to play for a coach like that because he wants to be a perfectionist like you do.”

Yet whether it’s Friday or Morgan or Chimuma, all of them want to be part of what they believe can be a special situation at Penn State Harrisburg.

Sure, the Lions won a couple of NEAC titles before relocating to the CAC.

These days, all of them are battling schools such as St. Mary’s (Md.), Salisbury (Md.), Wesley (Del.), Mary Washington (Va.) and Marymount (Va.) for CAC prominence.

“Wesley was ranked a couple years back and so was St. Mary’s,” Morgan recalled. “We could go on down the list. This conference is wide-open, but it’s competitive every night. Every night you’ve got to bring it.”

“The biggest thing I can do, because there’s only so much I can do, is in practice I can only tell those guys that you need to go hard, you need to push yourselves, you need to do this, you need to do that,” said Chimuma, who is anticipating the rise in competitive level from junior college to D-3. “Until they experience it themselves, there’s only so much I can say and there’s only so much I can do.”

Yet all of them are looking at what can happen, not what did happen.

Just like Friday.

“We’re not throwing a number on how many wins we can get, but what we are talking about is if we do all the things, if we do all the fundamentals, if we’re accountable and do our best each day, do the right things and we keep doing those things over and over, winning will be a byproduct as opposed to talking about it,” Friday said. “Let’s win, but what goes into winning?

“It’s starting to come together. We’re not gonna sit here and say we’re gonna do this or we’re gonna do that. … The trick now is getting these guys to buy in,” Friday continued. “They like each other, now they’ve got to create some chemistry. If they do that, we’re gonna have an identity, that we’re a good, sound defensive team, that we can execute, that we can play fast and if we have to sit down, put it on our hip and grind it out, we can do those things.

“Well done is better than well said.”