Allen formally introduced as Penn coach

When Jerome Allen was introduced yesterday afternoon as the Penn basketball coach, he hesitated a moment before beginning to speak from somewhere between his heart and soul.

The words tumbled out deliberately, softly, sometimes haltingly but with unmistakable passion and commitment. The eyes and the voice betrayed the emotion. And there was no attempt to hide it. This wasn't a coach whose interim tag had been removed the day before by Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky, but a man who had come to a point in his life where all pretense had long since disappeared. This was a man who was willing to tell anybody how he felt, why he felt it, and take 26 minutes to explain it.

That he was saying the words in his basketball Cathedral, the Palestra, where he had finished his brilliant Penn career 15 seasons before, was not lost on anybody in the audience. Serious Penn alums and administrators were there. So was the entire Temple coaching staff, tied so strongly to the building and the university. And the Penn players, so supportive of Allen in his quest, they were there, too.

Allen movingly told the story of his grandparents meeting in Lincoln, Ga., and then eventually leaving for Philadelphia, living in the projects with their seven children, searching for the indefinable but willing to take a chance for those that would come next.

"It's not about me," Allen kept saying.

By saying that he was also saying that they believed it was not about them.

The middle child was Allen's mother. Her parents wanted to see what could happen for their children and the generations beyond.

They could not possibly, Jerome Allen said, have envisioned this - the second generation standing at a podium in the Palestra as the basketball coach at the University of Pennsylvania. There would have been no odds on that. It was a dream so impossible as not to be even imagined. Only it was real and Allen was telling everybody about it.

He spoke of his parents and how he "was born into this family some 37 years ago. [The family] wasn't from a traditional standpoint well-educated, but they had values that surpassed all of that."

All that morphed into this.

"Some 65 years ago, they probably never would have imagined that their grandchild would be standing on this podium, let alone have the ability to attend this prestigious university," Allen said

Allen felt grateful. And he said it.

"[Bilsky] took an unbelievable risk in making this decision," Allen said. "I'm forever in debt to him because he probably saw some things in myself that I might not have recognized at the time . . . And I hope that because we both have red and blue blood, that helped the process."

In December, Allen was the accidental coach. In April, he is the coach.

"The interim thing was real," Bilsky said. "I said 'Jerome, let's get this thing together, let's get the right things done, who knows what the future holds?' "

"He looked at me and said 'I'm going to be your coach.' "

When Bilsky explained the process in February for selecting the next head coach, Allen's response was "I want this job."

And when the process was over, Allen had the job.

Allen was a volunteer assistant with no college coaching experience when last season began. Glen Miller was asked to leave after 0-7. Allen was asked to restore the Penn pride. Now, he is the coach.

"My story is crazy to me," Allen said. "I refuse to allow myself to think any different. It doesn't happen like this. It doesn't."

But it did. And Jerome Allen, one of Penn's greatest players, is Penn's head coach all those years after that journey from Georgia.

When Allen was just about finished at the podium, he paused and said: "We will get it done." Then, he said it again: "We will get it done."

One point guard chose another. And nobody was happier than the incumbent point guard, sophomore Zack Rosen.

"That's a glimpse of what he does behind the scenes with us," Rosen said of the speech.

Rosen did not know the family story that Allen told.

"It's a miracle," Rosen said. "It makes me think of my grandparents who survived the Holocaust. I consider that a miracle that I'm even alive. Then, he's in Philly. He comes back to Penn. We're blessed to be in this position with him today. It's magic."