How a team in its first year in Division I got a Big Ten program to play a game at its 867-seat arena

WEST HAVEN, Conn. — It was the opening-week matchup that had many double-checking the listing and scratching their heads.

Penn State, those Nittany Lions of the royal and regal Big Ten Conference, were playing a road game against … New Haven?

What’s New Haven?

The University of New Haven is the 365th/newest NCAA Division I school after beginning the transition process from Division II just a few months ago. And the Chargers, though 0-3 through the first six days of the season, have been as prominent as any low-major in the country, thanks to a respectable debut Monday at No. 4 UConn (a 79-55 loss) combined with pulling off the near-unthinkable. 

What transpired here Saturday afternoon was a rarity in NCAA history: a power-conference basketball program playing at a low-major school in its first week of Division I membership. Penn State agreed to do it and is no worse off as a result. Mike Rhoades’ Nittany Lions won 87-43.

As for New Haven, the school will take the game ball, paint the date and final score on it and proudly display the 44-point loss in its athletic facilities. 

Here’s the story of how New Haven convinced a Big Ten school to play in an 867-seat-capacity gym — and why Penn State opted in.

New Haven: ‘We’re taking the NCAA by storm’

New Haven’s Hazell Center is as no-frills as it gets. The third-smallest gym in the sport, it has no video board, and with the exception of a few banners and a CHARGERS painted on one end, the four concrete walls are bare-white. I’m a Connecticut resident, and in a former life I covered high school athletics around the state. Trust me when I tell you there are at least two dozen high school gymnasiums within 75 minutes of New Haven’s campus that are larger than what the Chargers play in.

Getting Penn State to come was an absolute coup for a school of this size, but the accomplishment pales in comparison to the unlikelihood of New Haven getting into Division I for 2025-26 to begin with. UNH athletic director Devin Crosby has spent 23 years in college athletics, including stops at Virginia, Houston and Oral Roberts. He’s been at New Haven for just 16 months, but the last six have been an all-out sprint. In late April, he got word that the NCAA was about to put a freeze on new applicants for Division I.

He had four days to make a decision.

Crosby met with UNH president Jens Frederiksen, and in less than 96 hours they determined they could fundraise and rally to apply. The cost to leave Division II would be $300,000. The fee just to apply for Division I membership was much more expensive: $1.9 million. 

Crosby and Frederiksen subsequently and miraculously raised $9 million over an 18-day period, Crosby told CBS Sports, which included million-dollar donations from some of the school’s richest alumni, including David Beckerman, who most famously founded Starter (the company synonymous with team-apparel jackets in the 1990s). The biggest donor is UNH football player Jeffery Hazell, who struck it big as a restauranteur and seafood entrepreneur shortly after graduating from the school in the 1980s. Hazell has donated $14 million to UNH in total. The school’s primary athletics building bears his name. 

Crosby prides his career on marrow-deep friendships more than anything. Once New Haven cleared the Division I barrier in the summer, he made many a call to his friends at the Power Five level, hoping one would say yes to christening UNH’s Division I debut. All except one said no. After some initial resistance, Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft agreed, with an unusual stipulation attached.

Typically, when a high-major program hosts low-major schools, they have to “buy” the game — literally paying out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to make the likely road loss worthwhile for the smaller school. But in this case, Crosby and Kraft worked out a deal: Penn State would come to New Haven in the first of a four-year agreement, but for the gesture, New Haven’s road trips to Penn State in 2026, 2027 and 2028 would be free of charge. 

“It was a huge professional favor,” Crosby said. “I am very indebted to Pat, who is a leader in our industry.”

Saturday’s game was a quick turnaround, tipping off 22 hours after the Chargers’ 71-53 home opener against Columbia. 

Everything is changing around here. Chargers coach Ted Hotaling has one player back from last year. He recruited an entirely new team knowing it was going to be a mountain of losses in Year 1 and quite possibly in Year 2. (Because of the transition rules in Division I, New Haven isn’t eligible to play in the NCAA Tournament until 2029.) 

Not one New Haven player is making money through NIL this season. Revenue-sharing doesn’t exist at schools like this. To overcome it, UNH will try to play every high-major conceivable to immediately increase its visibility.

“We’re trying to establish ourselves as a different program,” Hotaling said. “It’s very intentional to play UConn. I thought that was really good for our school, for our program, for our department. To have Columbia in the gym, and now Penn State in the gym, all these things can raise awareness to what we’re trying to do. It’s going to take some time to get there. I think we all know that. I think we have internal expectations in the basketball program that are very high, and I have to be careful to monitor those expectations, because those expectations need to be realistic.” 

For Crosby, he doesn’t want Saturday’s opportunity to be a one-and-done. He said he’s working hard to get another high-major in for a game next season and believes it will happen. If it does, the scene should be even better. Next summer, the Hazell Center will undergo retrofitting, with upgraded capacity, some luxury suites and a redesigned main level to expand the look and feel. 

“It is a masterplan for us to be one of the most recognizable institutions in all of the country,” Crosby said. “We’re taking the NCAA by storm. We don’t have [all] the money, but we have the creativity.”

Penn State: ‘You’ve got to be different, creative’

If there was one program and one coach at the high-major level who would truly be open to doing something as unorthodox as this, it’s Mike Rhoades. The 53-year-old played at D-III Lebanon Valley and thrived in gyms like this throughout his playing days — and even when he was a coach at D-III Randolph Macon. 

When Kraft approached Rhoades about the 3-for-1 — no payment included — he was in. A short flight to Connecticut to play a school almost no one heard of didn’t faze him at all … and neither did the unexpected pivot of having to stay an hour away from campus Friday night. Because the game was scheduled in late summer, there were no adequate hotels available in a 30-mile radius of New Haven due the massive Yale Clean Energy Conference that booked the region up months in advance.

No complaints allowed.

“I’m a D-III guy,” Rhoades told CBS Sports. “So I said to the guys … if we’re gonna bitch and moan about it, it’s probably gonna affect us when we play. That was my big thing. … If you’re going to complain about it, you’re going to blame everybody else, and you’re going to make excuses, it’s probably going to get you beat. So we’re just not doing that. I’m at Penn State. It’s a really hard job. It’s a tough situation. I love my AD. He’s trying really hard to help me. We’re going to try to figure this out the best we can. But no matter what, we’re not complaining, we’re not blaming anybody, we’re not making excuses. And because when you step on the court, that stuff can’t help you. That’s the mentality that we’ve had.” 

Penn State basketball is near the bottom in the Big Ten from an NIL/rev-share perspective, due to football’s outsized importance at that school. There are 79 programs Power Five college basketball schools. Rhoades doesn’t have the toughest job of them all, but Penn State probably ranks somewhere in the 70s. In order to build something that can be sustained, Rhoades believes he’s going to have to take some chances — and not be worried about what others might say about his scheduling philosophy. 

“We did it strategically for our program and for our budget and the opportunity we have to come here, and they’re going to come play us a few times,” Rhoades said. “And not everyone wants to do it. … It’s new times, man, you gotta think outside the box. You’ve got to find different ways to alleviate your budget. There’s some coaches said to me, including coaches in the Big Ten, ‘Are you crazy?’ But yeah, I am. Why not? So I think it was great. It was a great road trip for our guys. We’ve got to do things like this. You’ve got to be different, creative.”

Penn State has a game vs. La Salle in Philadelphia next week, then will return to Connecticut to play Providence at Mohegan Sun on Nov. 22. A month later, PSU will get paid six figures to play in Hershey, Pennsylvania, against Pitt. Rhoades is open to doing more 3- or 2-for-1s at a bargain with low-majors moving forward, too. He’s pragmatic, optimistic and unapologetic about all of it.

“I’m not apologizing for what we’re trying to do and how we go about it,” Rhoades said. “I told the guys, there’s only so many times in your college basketball career you get to put the uniforms on. Doesn’t matter if it’s on the blacktop, dirt or at Indiana, Purdue, Michigan or Penn State. Let’s always respect it.” 

Amid an opening week that had a wonderful spread of ranked-on-ranked matchups, must-watch freshmen and All-American candidates immediately looking the part, another worthwhile story emerged here in West Haven. This tiny gym in the middle of Connecticut played host to a game that served as a reminder to college basketball that wonderful things can still be possible, you just need people who care enough to make it happen — and damn the cynics who are too afraid to try it themselves.