UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- An aggregation of hundreds -- players and coaches; dignified and determined men -- came here hoping to halt history's avalanching momentum.

	Penn State: A timeline of losing Penn State has a long basketball history. Just not much it can be proud of. Here's a glance at the past 20 years of Lions' losing, divided by the three head coaches in that span. Bruce Parkhill (1983-95) Career record: 181-168 (.517) Parkhill made a miserable program better, but led it to just one NCAA tournament birth in 12 years. The end: Stressed and burned out, Parkhill stepped down after the 1995 season. Why Penn State is a challenge: "Penn State is such a good place -- it's such a great school and a great campus -- but the location is not ideal as far as proximity to recruiting [hotbeds]." Jerry Dunn (1995-2003) Career record: 117-121 (.492) In brief: Penn State tried to adjust to life in the Big Ten Conference, but managed just one winning in-conference record in Dunn's eight seasons. The end: Dunn resigned in April 2003 after back-to-back seven-win seasons. Why Penn State is a challenge: "Playing in the Big Ten is not something most kids in the Northeast grow up wanting to do; they grow up wanting to play in the ACC or the Big East." Ed DeChellis (2003-current) Career record: 14-22 (.388) In brief: In his first season, DeChellis' team, ravaged by injuries and transfers, started two freshmen guards and finished with nine wins. The end: To be determined. This year's team shows improvement, but still figures to finish in the league's bottom half. Why Penn State is a challenge: "Kids generally want to go somewhere where everything is in place in terms of winning, where they know they'll win X number of games and be in the NCAA tournament. [Here], we haven't been successful in terms of wins and losses."

But instead of halting the force, they added to it with more losses, with more forgettable seasons, with more disappointments and the downtrodden history of Penn State men's basketball gained so much speed, it blitzed through everybody who dared to stand in its way.

The force of losing has sent careers hurtling off track. "The job just wore me out," said Bruce Parkhill, who coached Penn State from 1983-1995 before stepping down. "It's kind of consuming, really."

The force of losing has deterred those who could potentially stop it. Rarely, in the previous generation, have the top in-state basketball recruits attended Penn State. Matt Carroll, who is searching for permanent work in the NBA, visited Penn State almost 10 times while in high school near Philadelphia. He then decided on Notre Dame. Scranton's Gerry McNamara thought about signing with Penn State, but he preferred a program that could sustain success, not manufacture it from nothing.

"I wanted to go to more of a basketball factory," said McNamara, who later chose Syracuse and helped it to a 2003 national championship.

The force of losing has perpetuated itself. Only one Penn State alum, Calvin Booth, currently plays in the NBA, and for Booth, plays translates loosely into averaging 2.2 points per game.

Penn State has stumbled, in the past three years, through seven-, seven- and nine-win seasons. In 12 years as a Big Ten Conference member, it has pulled off just one winning season. The Lions have become a campus afterthought, often playing untelevised games in their half-filled home arena.

So how, then, do you reverse the force of history in a way no predecessor has done? How can one man -- and, eventually, a few hand-picked players -- change the pattern established by hundreds to come beforehand? Why on earth does Ed DeChellis, Penn State's head coach for 1 ¹/₂ years, walk into living rooms of select high school basketball players across the Northeast, stare those players in the eyes and swear to them that, yes, Penn State basketball is changing its history?

DeChellis, engaging and straightforward, is a master persuader, but when he talks about building his men's basketball program, he knows the challenges inherent at Penn State and the immensity of his goal. He has taken just six days off in 619 days on the job.

He also knows Penn State is nowhere close yet. Just check out Penn State's upcoming game Saturday (2 p.m., Bryce Jordan Center) against Pitt: The 2004-05 Nittany Lions, despite their 5-3 record, demonstrate more obvious flaws than strengths. They lack depth and size. They've started, in several games this season, three freshmen in the backcourt. They've recently dropped games to South Carolina State and Illinois State.

"When I got here," DeChellis said, "we weren't a program that believed we could win. We were floundering around. I think the expectations had kind of slipped. We accepted losing. And that had to change."

Change tends to start where you can't see it: below ground, with recruiting, and by the time such changes hit the basketball court, they've already been several years in the making. DeChellis' first full recruiting class -- four freshmen on this year's Penn State team -- already looks like a reliable foundation. Thing is, rarely has Penn State stacked several solid classes atop one another. (As evidence, the Lions could make a run to the Sweet 16 one year, as they did in 2000-01 with a senior-laden team, and follow that with a seven-win, cupboard-is-bare season, at they did in 2001-02.)

Much of Penn State's fate will be determined by players still one and two years from college. That's why DeChellis, sitting in his office last week, could speak to a reporter for more than 35 minutes before mentioning a single current player by name.

"That's how a program is built, from the bottom up," DeChellis said. "We're looking for guys who want to change the perception and the attitudes of a program. It's easier said than done."

Most high school players are attracted to winning teams and tradition. Penn State has yet to cultivate that. High school players who grow up on the East Coast generally dream of playing in the Big East or the Atlantic Coast Conference. Penn State is in the Big Ten, a conference lacking the bite of its more urban-imaged counterparts.

When DeChellis recruits a player from, say, Philadelphia, he must convince that player to bypass five Division I-A schools within the city. The player's parents often express concern about travel: They could drive to almost any road game in the Big East or Atlantic-10, they say, but they would need to fly to most Big Ten road destinations.

It's an avalanche of obstacles to overcome. For the time being, therefore, Penn State must rebuild itself by finding players who are exceptions to the rule. As former Penn State coach Jerry Dunn said, the Lions search for players "who want to do something different."

"I say to [recruits], 'When you walk down to the beach, do you walk in somebody else's footsteps ahead of you, or do you want to make your own?'" DeChellis said. "And you kind of get a smile or something like, 'I don't get what he's saying.' The guys who smile, that's who we're looking for."

DeChellis' familiarity with Penn State's challenges digs almost 20 years deep, when he began, in 1986, as a Lions' assistant under Parkhill. He left University Park 10 years later to accept a job at East Tennessee State. His first year there, ETSU managed only seven wins. By the time DeChellis left ETSU for Penn State, he had guided that team to three consecutive conference titles.

That turnaround fuels the belief he holds in his second coaching reclamation project. And he's passing that belief along. Among the four freshmen on this year's Penn State team, Geary Claxton (West Haven, Conn.) signed with Penn State because he loved the idea of playing immediately. Danny Morrissey (Pepper Pike, Ohio) was won over by DeChellis' passion and honesty. Mike Walker (Lewisburry, Pa.) grew up rooting for Penn State, and chose it over some traditionally stronger basketball schools.

"After I verballed," Walker said, "I was excited, but then next couple days I was like, Man, I passed up on Pitt and Stanford!? You kind of think of those doubts. Then a week later [DeChellis] called me and he was still so excited about me coming, he was so revved up about next year's team. When I hung up the phone with him, I said, 'I think I made the right decision.' Now that I'm here, I know I did."

Longtime observers of the program called it Penn State's best class in years. Previously, particularly under Dunn, Penn State recruited players with enticing potential but with skills raw enough to scare off the elite basketball schools. DeChellis, judged by his first few recruits, would rather search for players with more complete games, but who perhaps lack the blue-chip size or speed.

Of course, this is a rebuilding process, and "rebuilding" is a coachspeak euphemism for "losing." And when losing links with change fallout is inevitable. Since the 2003-04 season began, four key players (Brandon Cameron, DeForrest Riley-Smith, Jan Jagla and Robert Summers) left the program with eligibility remaining.

But those departures were fine by DeChellis, who felt his newly inherited team could benefit from a clean change.

"If everybody had stayed, and we didn't have anybody transfer," said Summers, who left for West Virginia, "we could have been a great team." Said DeChellis: "I Disagree. Those guys had false impressions of how good they really were. Sometimes you have to change the parts before you can truly change the attitudes."

Given enough time, DeChellis hopes to gradually turn Penn State's basketball program from afterthought to big shot. Indeed, it has much progress to make. In the Bryce Jordan Center -- the on-campus basketball arena -- 33 banners hang along the rafters. Twenty-three of those belong to the women's basketball team.

History suggests that the Lions will remain campus also-rans, obscured by their losing. Precedent indicates that their current rebuilding process will end like many of the processes before, namely without much building. But for once, at a school stymied by its basketball history, somebody is finally looking toward the future.

"I came here with a challenge," DeChellis said. "I knew what we had. I knew it was going to be hard. Yet I wake up every day eager to get here, eager to get started, and my goal is to hang banners in that arena out there. So we're going to do it. There's just that one magic question: When?"