Sports

Penn State Basketball Played Bizarre Road Game In Front Of TINY Crowd At TINY Gym To Save A LOT Of Money

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Penn State New Haven Basketball Crowd
NEC Front Row

Penn State played the coolest and most unusual non-conference game of the 2025-26 college basketball season at New Haven on Saturday. This singular contest will ultimately save the Nittany Lions a few hundred thousand dollars (or more) over the next few years.

They will not play in front of a smaller max-capacity crowd, maybe ever!

Not only is this a great business decision for Penn State, it makes for one of the best stories in college basketball this season. There will not be a more unique dichotomy between brand status and crowd size.

New Haven just made the transition to D1.

The Chargers played their first season of college basketball in 1961. They have an all-time record of 902-787.

However, the University of New Haven previously competed as a member of the Northeast-10 Conference on the Division-II level of collegiate athletics until very recently.

It officially made the transition to Division-I competition on July 1, 2025. The university, which enrolls approximately 9,200 students in total, joined the Northeast Conference alongside schools like Central Connecticut, Fairleigh Dickinson, Long Island, St. Francis and Le Moyne, among others.

Due to the NCAA’s policy on reclassifying programs, the Chargers will not be eligible to compete in the NCAA Tournament or NIT until 2028-29. The rule does not prevent them from playing a full schedule against Division-I opponents.

They began the 2025-26 season with a road loss to UConn on Monday. They followed it up with their first home game, a loss to Columbia, on Friday. That leads us to Saturday.

Penn State traveled east to play college basketball.

Schools like New Haven typically play bigger schools like Penn State on the road. Ie: the UConn game.

Not this time!

The Chargers were desperate to fill their first Division-I schedule so Nittany Lions head coach Mike Rhoades agreed to make the trip to Connecticut to save money. New Haven agreed to play multiple non-conference games in Happy Valley in the future if Penn State played in West Haven on Saturday.

“Some people told me I’m crazy to do it. You gottta put yourself out there. Let’s do it,” Rhoades said. “Ted (Hotaling) runs a great program up there. He’s a very good coach, and they made a transition to Division I. They were looking for home games with an opportunity to get them to return the game multiple times.”

Power conference teams typically pay a large sum of money to schedule early-season mid-majors at home. Those “buy games” are not cheap. We’re talking somewhere around $50,000 or greater.

Because Rhoades agreed to play at New Haven, New Haven will play at Penn State for free.

“This has all changed, right? I’m not just a coach, but I oversee the program, and part of overseeing that program is overseeing the budget, too,” Rhoades said. “If there are opportunities, even in scheduling, where we could save money, make money, go out there and have opportunities for our guys and for our program — you’ve gotta look at it.”

The opportunity to eat some local apizza while in town surely helped to sweeten the deal.

What a scene!

The University of New Haven plays at the Jeffery P. Hazell Center on campus in West Haven, which holds a maximum capacity of 1,000 fans.

To put that number in perspective, Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center holds up to 15,000.

The contrast between the two venues is rather jarring. It was a very strange (but cool!) visual to see one of the biggest brands in college sports play in a gym that looks more like a high school.

The 1,000-person crowd went bonkers for a Chargers rejection during the first half.

We may never see another game like this in the history of college basketball. We must appreciate the oddity.