Cager silent but deadly

By KEVIN GORMAN
Collegian Sports Writer

The noise levels at Rec Hall have often been credited for affecting the outcome of a basketball game by giving an adrenaline boost to Nittany Lion players and draining the confidence from visitors.

The bellows from the student section that ricochet off the rafters and onto the hardwood can rejuvenate a team as quickly as it takes to sink a three-pointer.

But for Glenn Sekunda, the road is a haven, and every new gymnasium brings another challenge. For Sekunda, the Lions' junior power forward, the degree of loudness is not the factor.

He wants to hear silence.

"It's a great feeling when you hear the crowd going nuts and then you make a shot and you take the crowd out of it and hear nothing but quiet," Sekunda said. "That's one of the things I really enjoy."

When the Lions (15-8, 7-7 Big Ten) visit Indiana (15-10, 7-6) at 2 p.m. tomorrow in Bloomington, Ind., Sekunda will be faced with his biggest challenge yet. Indiana's Assembly Hall seats 17,357, and is the largest arena in the conference.

"From what I hear, I can definitely anticipate a rowdy crowd," Sekunda said. "I mean, it's the Hoosier state.

"But Indiana's just another team, and they're beatable," he added. "We feel that we're playing real well right now and are capable of beating any team on a given night."

At sixth place in the Big Ten standings, the Hoosiers are a spot ahead of the Lions, who are tied with Iowa for seventh. The Lions contend they need to win three of their remaining four games for consideration of an NCAA tournament at-large bid.

Whereas the Lions started the season as a strong perimeter shooting team, they started to depend on senior center John Amaechi as Big Ten play began. And it was Sekunda, a natural small forward, whose difficulty was not adjusting to his role, but to the adversity that he and his teammates found among themselves.

"I went through a slump where I wasn't shooting well, and I let it affect some other areas of my game," he said. "Sometimes, I let it affect my shooting, rebounding or intensity. The games that we lost, I wasn't shooting well."

Sekunda averages 14.1 points per game on 50 percent shooting from field-goal range this season. But his average dropped to 10.8 points per game and he shot only 38 percent (23-of-60) from the field in the recent six-game span that saw the Lions lose five.

"I always knew the potential I had," he said. "I guess I'm doing decent right now, but I know that I'm capable of doing better. I'm getting an opportunity that I never had at Syracuse."

In the 1993 Big East tournament, a sophomore Sekunda scored 15 points in a semifinal victory over St. John's and collected 10 points in the championship game, despite losing to Seton Hall.

But Sekunda, the 1991 USA Today New Jersey Player of the Year from Parsippany Hills High School in Morris Plains, averaged only 10 minutes and 3.9 points per game in those two seasons.

So he transferred to Penn State, and after sitting out the NCAA-mandated one season, he assumed a vital role in the Lions' quest to move out of the Big Ten basement and into the NCAA tourney field of 64.

"Glenn has given us a player who has good skills, good shooting ability and, unfortunately, he's had to play out of position some this year due to an injury we had to (Matt Gaudio, now a graduate assistant coach)," Lion Coach Bruce Parkhill said. "He's a player who's a threat to score from the three-point line as well as put the ball on the floor."

At Penn State, the 6-foot-7 Sekunda is the Lions' second-leading scorer and rebounder (6.5 per game) behind Amaechi, despite playing with a height disadvantage at the No. 4 slot.

"I've enjoyed basketball all my life. It gets hectic. It's not easy to enjoy losing," Sekunda said. "However, when you start winning, and if you make it to the NCAA tournament, you see different things that can become a possibility. It rejuvenates certain feelings and makes you realize what you've worked for."