On Thursday night, Penn State men’s basketball will host its annual “Return to Rec” game against Wisconsin, trading in the much-larger Bryce Jordan Center for the smaller, more intimate venue of Rec Hall, where the team played until 1996.

It’s been 30 years since the BJC was built and began hosting both men’s and women’s basketball. The venue holds over 15,000 people, but it rarely even reaches 50% capacity when the blue and white take the basketball court, regardless of the opponent or day. It doesn’t matter if two future lottery picks are visiting from Rutgers or one of the many top-ten teams that the Big Ten has provided over the years; the arena is just never full.

The “Return to Rec” game is a fun idea, and it certainly has its positives, but there’s a reason that the team decides to have it be their version of the White Out. Unlike all games in the BJC, Rec Hall will be full. The administration has, by and large, accepted that the way to give Penn State basketball a home-court advantage is by reducing the capacity.

But why does it have to be that way?

I get why most games are pretty barren. Even if the team was good, it’s hard to get people to travel as far as they have to get to State College for a midweek non-conference game. Basketball games will never be the event that football is or what hockey and wrestling have become, but why can’t they fill the arena for the marquee matchups?

The season-high in attendance for men’s basketball was 7,091 on December 13 against Michigan State. The season-high last season was 10,298 on March 1 against Maryland. The last time the team sold out the BJC was almost six years ago.

Yet, when they go on the road, they routinely walk into packed venues of 15,000 fans in Bloomington, Madison, East Lansing, Lincoln, etc. The atmosphere in the BJC over the last several seasons pales in comparison to the rest of the Big Ten.

It draws back into investing in the program. It doesn’t take an expert to see that, at a school that has such a great athletic program and such an ambitious athletic director, basketball has fallen behind. The buzz just isn’t there. The men’s and women’s teams have opened Big Ten play with a combined 0-16 record. Frankly, it’s disgraceful.

And it’s one thing if it’s the ebbs and flows of college athletics, but it keeps happening to these teams. For a second straight year, there’s a strong case that Penn State has the Big Ten’s worst men’s and women’s teams. NCAA Tournament appearances are few and far between. They’re just never relevant.

But why can’t it be?

It’s not like basketball can’t work in State College. The last time the Bryce Jordan Center was sold out for basketball came on February 8, 2020, when the Nittany Lions were ranked and en route to their first NCAA Tournament berth in a decade. The team drew several crowds of over 13,000, which had not been seen in years, as they rose to No. 9 in late February, the team’s highest AP poll ranking in 24 years.

If you build it, they will come.

The overall investment in the program needs some digging into. Mike Rhoades makes a rather low salary for a Power Four head coach, with his average annual value being approximately $3.7 million, which is one of the lower salaries in the Big Ten. The schools lower or on the same tier as Penn State get about what they paid for, a bottom-tier basketball program.

It’s also evident in the handling of the team’s NIL. More than 1,000 Division I basketball players entered the transfer portal, many of them from mid-major schools. A cruel reality of modern college athletics is that big schools poach the standouts from smaller programs, but it’s a tool Penn State could utilize.

Despite plenty of players to choose from and a roster that returned just three players from a disappointing 2024-25 season, Rhoades and company only secured two players: Josh Reed from Cincinnati and Saša Ciani from UIC.

As such, they had to fill out the roster by utilizing the international player loophole, grabbing European standouts Melih Tunca, Ivan Juric, and Tibor Mirtic. It resulted in a roster comprised of eight freshmen and had just one player, Freddie Dilione V, with sizable collegiate playing experience before the season. There’s a reason expectations were very low this season.

There aren’t public figures for how much each basketball program spends on NIL, but Penn State’s investment feels toward the bottom of the Big Ten. It undoubtedly invested in bringing in Kayden Mingo, the highest-ranked recruit in program history, and is surely pushing hard to pull off the upset in getting his brother, Dylan, to head to Happy Valley over more historic programs in Baylor and North Carolina, but if they aren’t able to pull that off, what avenues are they utilizing to elevate the program?

We’re not asking for an elite program that’s perennially competing for national championships. We understand that there’s already tremendous investment in football, wrestling, and hockey, and their success has garnered some incredibly loyal supporters across the Penn State community.

But there’s nothing like college basketball, especially in March. As students, we shouldn’t have to hope that our high-major program can make March Madness one time in our four years here, but that’s the way it’s been for decades. It’s time for the athletic department to put its foot down and demand more from the second-most popular sport in college athletics.