The black curtains rarely move on Saturdays anymore, if they ever did in the 10-year history of the Bryce Jordan Center. They conspicuously try to hide the small men's basketball crowd. Maybe if we don't let them see the seats, they won't notice they're completely empty.

Judging from the sparse Concourse Level attendance at this season's games, they won't move. There won't be any Monty Hall showing what's behind curtain No. 3, no one pulling the strings.

But Jamelle Cornley, a freshman forward on the men's basketball team, wants the curtain pushed aside to reveal the seats he hasn't ever seen. Big crowds are hard to come by and people need a reason to come, as at the Jan. 14 game vs. Iowa, when 8,293 showed up to see the football team honored at halftime.

Otherwise, it's the Shroud of Losin'. But for how much that may bother Cornley, he's come to terms with it and the small crowds.

"We're hoping pretty soon that they can just move them a little bit," Cornley said. "People have their own reasons [for coming], and you can't control it."

Add this to a list of things throughout his life he hasn't been able to control, from the death of his high school coach to the development of basketball skills. And if Cornley can face what he can't control, grab whatever power he can and come out for another round -- well, moving curtains will be no problem.

Out of control

Cornley was nervous the first time he ever met his high school basketball coach, Bruce Howard. This was, of course, before Cornley turned 10 and ever played a second for Brookhaven High School in Columbus, Ohio.

Howard and Cornley's father, Hank, were good friends after attending Mifflin High School, also in Columbus. They never played basketball together at Mifflin -- Hank graduated in 1980, Howard in 1975.

But both played for the same coach, John Smith, who completed the basketball family circle when he became as an assistant to Howard. Cornley had heard Howard was strict, but the initial meeting didn't go badly.

"When I met him and got to talk with him, he was a very down to earth person. After a while we kicked it off," Cornley said.

They would kick it off once again in 2002, when Cornley and Howard's stepson Andrew Lavender helped win the Division I state championship for Howard. Was Howard strict? Yes. But he was the kind of coach Cornley said players gave what he wanted "as much as he wanted." And in the championship run, it worked.

The pair would not get a chance for another after Howard's health diminished in the early weeks of 2003. An emergency stomach surgery and subsequent tests on Jan. 26 revealed advanced cirrhosis in Howard, according to a March 20, 2003, article in The Columbus Dispatch.

Brookhaven reached the state championship game that year, too, but not with Howard at the helm. His liver disease forced Howard to step down as head coach, and, after a months-long battle, proved fatal.

Cornley doesn't say much about his coach's death, though he sat through the final hours with his mother, Dorci Smith, in Riverside Methodist Hospital. He does remember the date as if it happened last week -- April 11, 2003, just a week before his 16th birthday. The effects of Howard's death rippled forth, casting a shadow over the rest of Cornley's high school career.

"It probably wasn't until the start of the next season that it really, really hit home," Smith said. "He had to deal with it in a way. I'm not sure he has dealt with it."

Things happen

The whims of nature swept away Cornley's friend and mentor, and that's a reality of the world. They also took the plan he and Howard designed, and, potentially, the type of basketball player Cornley became.

You see Cornley on the court now, and you see his control. You see a thick post player who plays with near animalism and treats the basketball like a bear treats fresh salmon. Under that hoop, it's all instinct and elbow grease.

He's not the wiry spring teammate Geary Claxton is, but it looks natural for Cornley. In fact, just about the only thing he doesn't like about basketball is that you can't hit each other.

"To bang, to get in there and have people coming at you and you going at them, night in and night out," Cornley said. "That's what basketball's all about."

But if Howard had lived, you might not see Cornley banging around. You might see him playing at the three rather than the post as a small forward. With Howard's help, his ball-handling skills and shooting would have developed. It was, and still is, a long-time goal. But then...

"It kind of backfired when he passed away," Cornley said. "My recruiting or whatever would have been different if he was still around. He could develop players within summers. I was cheated because it was something I had been working so hard on and was looking forward to. But things happen."

Things happen? Hank called Howard's death "one of the worst things" that happened to Cornley, basketball wise. Life had pick-pocketed Cornley's breast pocket, the one closest to his heart, and this was the great coping mechanism. It was one of those things simply out of his control.

His resolution was tested as the residue of Howard's death dripped down into his sophomore, junior and senior seasons. Brookhaven continued to use him as a post player, and he was good. According to www.gopsusports.com, he scored 1,620 points and earned scads of awards -- many of which he didn't even know he won.

In sacrificing his development to help the team win, Cornley learned the difference between becoming a good player and a selfish one. He could have left to pursue his dream at another high school if not for all his teammates and the trials they'd been through.

"It was sour for me. I wanted something so bad as far as becoming this perimeter player but at the same time, I knew I couldn't," Cornley said. "I wouldn't let my team down."

What If

When Penn State coach Ed DeChellis first went to Cornley's house, he brought a couple things: a DVD with Penn State basketball clips and a promise. DeChellis wanted to win. After looking in DeChellis' "dead honest" eyes, Cornley wanted to be part of it. A good thing, because Penn State wanted him to be when other colleges did not.

"They didn't come out and really recruit me how some people thought or some people would like," Cornley said.

Coming out of high school standing 6-foot-6 at the tallest, Cornley possessed the talent to receive offers from Dayton, Nebraska, St. Louis and St. Bonaventure, among others.

Had he been 6-foot-9, Cornley might have had basketball schools with banner-in-the-rafters tradition putting their tire tracks by his curb. Or his hometown Ohio State, even though Cornley said he wanted a change of scenery. Close, however, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, not hoops.

While signing his letter of intent for Penn State became the forward's greatest personal success, the recruiting process also revealed his greatest personal fear: people would penalize him for not being tall enough as long as he played.

"They won't look at all the other things that I have done and who I have played against," Cornley said. "As much as I can sit up here and say it doesn't matter, to some people it does matter."

Hank said he's had to address the worries and questions with Cornley over the last couple years. What if he never got the chance to play as a perimeter player? What if Penn State needed to play him as a post player, just like Brookhaven? What if his coach hadn't died? What if, what if.

You can "what if" Cornley's life until it resembles the story of someone else. For Cornley, that's the point. Each successive time he doesn't have control or looks like he's going to lose -- which he said he absolutely hates -- Cornley doesn't ask questions. He goes back to an idea he adopted: handle what you can. If you're going to get beat, do it fighting.

Like in his freshman year of high school basketball, when he limited then-Duke-bound senior Shelden Williams to 10 points and six rebounds, according to a Jan. 20 article in The Columbus Dispatch.

Williams brought his Midwest City High School team into Columbus for the National Hoops Classic. Midwest came in nationally ranked and, thanks to Cornley's effort, went out losers, 71-59. Cornley should have succumbed to Williams' 6-foot-9 height, his All-America status, his 20-12 averages.

Instead, when Williams delivered an elbow that "rocked Jamelle back," according to Hank, Cornley delivered a shot of his own, saying, "I'm not going anywhere."

"I knew my son was good before he got to high school," Hank said. "I didn't know how good until that particular game. He showed me what he was made of."

Into Control

Cornley's drive doesn't distinguish his story; most athletes have it. The consuming need to come out on top and do what's out of his reach, however, does -- despite fortune seldom sitting in his corner.

He's so adept at getting control, he expects to come out on top. He wants to win a Big Ten championship at Penn State, despite joining a 63-loss team over the past three years.

"If we didn't win another game in the Big Ten, it would kinda backfire on me," Cornley said of his Penn State plans after the team's first conference victory this year. "I set my standards so high."

He said a conference championship might not happen this year, with a 3-6 Big Ten record and a host of narrow losses. Crying after one of those, an 80-76 loss to Iowa on Jan. 14, showed Cornley failing to meet those standards.

He brooded in front of the interview microphones, red-eyed and beating himself up for botching what he called "the most important possession" of the game. With the ball -- and perhaps game -- in his hands, Cornley threw an errant pass out of bounds.

"When something like that happens, in a key game like that, and I knew that we could have won that game, I kinda look at myself first," Cornley said.

The loss put the Lions' conference record at 1-2. Having gone 2-4 since then, Cornley's tempered his introspections and self-blame. After the team's 75-64 loss to Ohio State on Jan. 21, to the coach who didn't recruit him and the friends from back home, he talked to his mother like he normally does. She could hear the tears in his voice after Iowa. This one, she thought, would be no different.

"I was kinda dreading that phone call," Smith said. "Surprisingly, he wasn't beating himself up as much ... He's starting to realize, 'I'm going to have these types of games.' "

That doesn't mean Cornley likes losing. He still hates it. But the view is of a player's evolution, a player cheated by the death of a coach, nagged by the ongoing pursuit of a dream. A player mentally tougher and stronger.

The Six Million Dollar Man? Hardly. A team of scientists built him. Lack of control, and resolving to find it -- somewhere -- on a sheer surface, built Cornley.

"Whatever is in my ability that I can control, that's what I'm trying to do," Cornley said. "If I have the freedom to become a small forward, I will. If I can't, then I can't."

As Penn State is learning, it is still building him, too. So while the empty Concourse Level eats at Cornley, he recognizes he can't drag people to the arena and put the butts in the seats himself. Just like he can't add three inches, couldn't have those years with Howard and didn't get the chance to play perimeter.

"The seats will fill up," Cornley said. "I want that black curtain in the Bryce Jordan Center to move."

And if Cornley has any control over it, people will have a reason to come. Monty Hall, better warm up those pipes -- Jamelle's at the helm.