Another Penn State men’s basketball season is in the books without a ticket punched to the Big Dance — or even the NIT, for that matter. Perhaps now more than ever, it has become clear that the mixture of coaching and a lack of funding has driven the program to consistent sub-mediocrity.

Like every disappointing season in recent memory, fans have been questioning Pat Chambers’ position as head coach. With an active streak of eight missed tournaments, it should come as no surprise that Chambers’ job security is in question. Well, it was in question until Sandy Barbour publicly declared her desire to keep Chambers around.

Saying Penn State has been mediocre over the past decade is understating things for this program. The Nittany Lions have failed to make the NCAA Tournament for Chambers’ entire eight-year career in Happy Valley. Only Rutgers has a longer streak within the Big Ten. It’s hard to make the argument that mediocrity means only being better than Rutgers.

Even using the rest of the conference as a yardstick to compare Penn State to other teams is a flawed method. The Big Ten is the only Power Five conference with three or more teams suffering a tournament drought of at least six years.

The average drought among Big Ten teams is more than eight years long, which is admittedly skewed by Rutgers’ horrific 28-year drought. Even if you remove Rutgers’ drought completely, the average Big Ten drought is 4.8 years, which is still the longest average among Power Five conferences. This is all to say the bottom of the Big Ten is as consistently bad as it gets, so outperforming those teams is no feat whatsoever and not a true measure of mediocrity.

I think any Penn State fan would take mediocrity in the Big Ten if it means a tournament appearance every four or five seasons — based on the average drought length excluding Rutgers.

Chambers hasn’t had many issues on the recruiting trail, so it’s hard to make the argument that no one wants to play at Penn State. Josh Reaves and Mike Watkins highlighted his 2015 class as four-star prospects, and they were followed by an incoming group that included Tony Carr and Lamar Stevens. The pinnacle that the group reached was an NIT title, which is disappointing based on its talent.

Some fans and journalists alike seem to excuse the underperformance due to how supposedly difficult it is to build a program in Central Pennsylvania. It’s about three hours away from major population centers, they claim, which makes it some sort of incredible uphill battle to build a winning program.

However, Iowa made three consecutive NCAA tournament appearances from 2013-2016. Is someone going to try and tell me Iowa has a geographical advantage in recruiting over Penn State, which is a relatively short drive away from Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, DC?

If the reason for keeping Chambers around is about saving money, then what’s the point of even having a basketball program? Chambers’ salary sits among the bottom in the conference and the school dishes out the least funds toward basketball in the conference. I’m sure Barbour’s office would save a lot of money by just slashing the coaching staff altogether, especially given that the program is one of the few revenue generators in athletics.

I don’t expect the athletic department to correct course any time soon — even though Penn State’s performance over the course of Chambers’ tenure as head coach is unacceptable. Changing the state of this program would require some spending.

Almost every Penn State basketball fan will know the administration seems content with a team that most of the community ignores entirely and rarely qualifies for the postseason.

It’s the Penn State way.