Some coaches don't dwell on the numbers, the records and the little things that fans hang onto to measure a team's improvement.

Ed DeChellis isn't one of those coaches.

Ed DeChellis ? ?One of the biggest challenges is to raise expectations and change attitudes.?. (Pat Little, Associated Press)
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In his first season with Penn State, DeChellis goes out of his way to point out those things to his players. Like how they finished the non-conference schedule with a winning record for the first time since 2000-01, or how they started 2-0 in Big Ten Conference games for the first time since 1994-95.

"Before we start practice and as we meet every day, I talk about those things," said DeChellis, a Monaca native. "They are little baby steps, but I tell them it's starting to make a difference."

What better way to take baby steps than with the babies of college basketball, relatively speaking?

With a young team that includes two freshman starters and just one senior starter, the Nittany Lions (8-6, 2-1) have had more ups than downs this season after a couple of years of struggling. Penn State posted 7-21 records in each of the previous two seasons. They won just two Big Ten games last season.

Although they are coming off of a 76-58 pasting Wednesday night at Michigan State -- and had to spend an extra day there because snowy weather grounded their charter flight --they already have surpassed the seven wins the team had in each of the past two seasons with 13 games remaining before the Big Ten tournament.

"One of the biggest challenges is to raise expectations and change attitudes," DeChellis said. "When things haven't been successful the past couple years, the expectations aren't what they need to be."

That's not a problem with the Penn State backcourt. Point guard Ben Luber and two-guard Marlon Smith are freshmen, so they don't live with the memory of seasons past.

"The freshmen are easy -- they just play and do what you tell them to do," said DeChellis, who recruited Smith but inherited Luber from former coach Jerry Dunn.

Smith, 6 feet and 186 pounds, is averaging 11.3 points in 33.7 minutes a game. Luber, 6-0 and 160, adds 7.4 points and 4.5 assists (fourth in the Big Ten) a game, with 26 steals (tied for fifth in the league), and logs 37.1 minutes per contest. There's not a lot of depth there.

"They're probably getting more time than any freshman guards in the country," DeChellis said. "Both have developed very, very well."

Two sophomores are playing prominent roles. Rob Summers, a 6-11, 232-pound forward, has been starting lately and averages 3.7 points and 4.4 rebounds. Aaron Johnson, a 6-9, 200-pound forward, has been a spark off the bench despite missing the first five games after surgery for a detached retina. He is averaging 6.2 points and 4.2 rebounds a game with a .476 shooting percentage from the field.

Perhaps the team's most intriguing player is 7-0, 231-pound junior Jan Jagla, who is fifth in the Big Ten in scoring with a 16.3-point average despite getting just two points against Michigan State, when he appeared to get frustrated. He averages 8.4 rebounds (third in the league) and has 21 blocks (fourth in the league) and 15 steals. He has twice been named the Big Ten player of the week.

Jagla is shooting .497 from the field, including a surprising .375 (15 of 40) from 3-point range.

"He's been solid," DeChellis said. "Jan's a kid who can play on the perimeter and can play the post. He can score on the perimeter, and he can score from the post.

"I'm just trying to get him to play harder, tougher, stronger. He has struggled on the road. That's something I have to battle with."

The lone senior starter is 6-6, 232-pound forward Ndu Egekeze, who played sparingly last season and is averaging 8.3 points and 4.5 rebounds a game.

"He's the only one who's played on a team with a winning record," DeChellis said, referring to the 2000-01 Penn State team, which went 21-12 and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

On the heels of the pasting at Michigan State and with the team stuck in a hotel waiting to travel home Thursday, DeChellis left the players for a couple of days of recruiting, starting with a trip to Texas.

He figured with no games until Wednesday at Illinois, he could afford to give the Nittany Lions a couple of days off before resuming practice over the weekend. And he figured with things just starting to turn around, he could not afford to make short shrift of recruiting.

"We've got a lot of work to do," he said. "We've got to really improve our personnel over the next two years. That's why I'm going out recruiting. I'm trying to get things done on both ends."

As DeChellis prepares the team for Illinois, he no doubt will resume his daily reminders of progress in the program, and perhaps throw in a little damage control in the wake of the Michigan State loss.

"There's no question we've gotten better as a team and as a program," he said. "I just try to motivate them and coach them. We're very young and very inexperienced, but I still want us to control what we can control on the floor.

"I just don't want guys to get down. You lose a game, that happens. It's not easy on the road. We aren't going to accept losing, but we've got to maintain a level of consistency."

First Published: January 18, 2004, 5:00 a.m.