Bump time.
March 30, 2016 (Lansing State Journal):
Hollis said Wednesday he has “full confidence” in the man he hired five years ago, with Anastos’ 71-98-20 record mostly a product of circumstance and the complexity of building a hockey roster.
"I feel really good about where we’re at,” Hollis said. “I’m like anyone else, I get frustrated as a fan as we’re going through the year and you have games where you feel like you’re being challenged a little bit as a spectator. But I’m also an AD that has to look at, ‘OK, what’s the next five years going to look like, based upon the past five years?’ And from all the assessments I’ve put into this and all the folks I’ve talked to, I’m very confident we’re going to have success here next year and in the immediate future.
“The roster is something that is very difficult to manage,” Hollis said, “because of the different aspects where kids are coming from and where they’re going to. And by that I mean, the competition that you have with Canadian junior hockey, with individuals going pro. We’ve gone through and we’ve mapped out the past 10 years on our entire roster and how we’ve gotten to the place that we’ve gotten to and what’s practical in putting on coach Anastos and, frankly, coach (Rick) Comley before that.
“I feel like we’ve got a good system in place to build the type of student-athletes you want to have here,” Hollis said. “Unfortunately you can’t do that in five years. Penn State had a great advantage in having no roster (when it started its program) and being able to build from ground zero. Tom fulfilled all of the commitments put out there prior to him (by Comley). And as you know, in hockey, you start recruiting kids at the age of 14 and maybe in some cases don’t get them until they’re 20. It’s uniquely different than football, uniquely different than basketball.
