Penn did what many of its vocal alumni had wanted on Monday morning by sacking coach Glen Miller just seven games into his fourth season. That it happened is not much of a surprise, given the level of anger that had been building among those alumni, including Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell. That it happened during the season is a surprise. We weigh in with more, and with links to coverage of a most unusual week at 33rd and Spruce, after the jump.

Yes, Penn is an Ivy League school. But Penn basketball is not your typical Ivy League program. Because it’s in Philly, because of the Big 5, because of the Palestra, and because of its history of sustained success, Penn is just different. It has its own culture, to be honest, and that seemed to be what athletic director Steve Bilsky — himself one of the all-time great players in Quakers history — was going for by replacing Miller with Jerome Allen, arguably the greatest Quaker of all time. The job requires a connection and a rapport with the program’s proud history that Miller — either willfully or unwittingly — never seemed to understand. As Bilsky put it, according to the Daily News,:

“I think this is an opportunity for us to recapture the Penn identity or begin to recapture that by hiring Jerome. He represents to me the essence of what a student-athlete at Penn is, both in terms of how he got to Penn [from Episcopal Academy], what he did when he got here, how he feels about the school, and how he has kept in touch with us subsequently.”

It is somewhat odd that Bilsky made this decision during the season, but a dreadful 0-7 start will do that. Fact is, there probably isn’t a great time to fire a coach, but with the Quakers not playing again until Dec. 28, and with the opprtunity still there to begin building something before Ivy play begins in February, it became necessary.

This doesn’t smack us as an unbecoming move for a university to make. It actually reflects the exact kind of desperate change the situation called for. That it became a national story is not really a surprise because, as Jonathan Tannenwald noted in his Soft Pretzel Logic blog for Philly.com: “[T]he program still matters to a lot of people.” As others have noted, this will be a coveted job should Allen not be offered the gig full-time after the season. And anyone who doubts this should check out what Zack Rosen told the Daily News during Allen’s first practice in charge on Tuesday:

“I’ve seen what it looks like. I’ve seen what the Palestra looks like. That’s why I came here. That’s what I came here for. Now, there’s no more barriers in the way. There’s no more excuses. Now, there’s no one to point at. Now, it’s us and what we do with the new opportunity.”

Links: Miller out at Penn [Philly Hoops Insider]
Gov. Rendell among the unhappy Quaker faithful [BIG FIVE POST]
What Miller lacked [Daily News]
Penn’s decision to go with Allen in-season [Daily News]
The national story of Glen Miller’s firing [Soft Pretzel Logic]
Allen’s task is clear [Daily News]
Photo credit: [rushthecourt.net]

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