Ed DeChellis wants to move on, but the question will continue to linger.
What happened with the schedule?
Monday, the Penn State men's basketball coach said he no longer wanted to talk about a slate of games that damaged the team's RPI and may have kept it out of the NCAA tournament.
But, shortly after the announcement of the bracket Sunday, DeChellis did answer schedule questions and expressed regret about losing to Rhode Island in November's Philly Hoop Group Classic, therefore taking away a chance to play Villanova.
"The schedule is what it is," DeChellis said. "We played it, and I think the thing that hurt us in Philly is we were really counting on playing Villanova in the second round of that thing, and that would've helped our strength of schedule."
Without playing Villanova, Penn State played just two non-conference teams ranked in the RPI top 100 -- Rhode Island and Temple -- and lost to both, leaving the Lions without a marquee non-conference win on their NCAA tournament resume.
Despite finishing tied for fourth in the Big Ten standings and one win away from earning the No. 2 seed in the conference tournament, the Lions' RPI of 70 places them eighth in the Big Ten according to RealTimeRPI.com.
And the reason for that is simple: an overall strength of schedule ranked 91st -- 36 spots worse than anyone else in the Big Ten.
"Well, I think we tried to schedule smartly, and maybe not smart enough obviously," DeChellis said. "Again, the Rhode Island thing really hurt us with the Villanova thing we were counting on. We thought we had enough to get that one, and that would be sufficient."
The best non-conference win ended up being a 61-56 victory against No. 118 Mount St. Mary's. A Big Ten/ACC Challenge win at Georgia Tech appeared strong at the time, but the Yellow Jackets stumbled in conference play and boast an RPI of just 139.
"I think that our coaching staff did what was best," senior forward Jamelle Cornley said. "They tried to schedule the games and teams that were good enough and that they felt we could compete against.
"It didn't work to our favor in certain people's eyes, and that's something that we can look at in further detail more and more. But, it just happened."
Games against teams who became RPI-killers like No. 343 NJIT, No. 299 Hartford, No. 280 Army and No. 308 Lafayette left little margin for error in contests with Rhode Island and Temple, as well as in the conference season.
Now, close losses to Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State and others leave the Lions wondering, "What if?"
"A couple bank shots kept us out of the tournament, you know [Iowa's] Jake Kelly made a couple bank shots," sophomore guard Talor Battle said. "The Wisconsin game early in the season we lost by four, Michigan State here close.
"There's a lot of games we've thought about, but I mean we can't go back and fix them now. So we just gotta move on."
According to bulletins posted on the Basketball Travelers, Inc., Web site, Penn State is hoping to arrange a home-and-home series with a Big East or Big 12 school starting next season.
Unfortunately, it might be a year too late.
"We've got three or four games to schedule, and we've tried to schedule some really good people over the last two or three weeks," DeChellis said. "I think as our program advances, it's getting harder and harder to schedule."
