At Penn State, DeChellis led the Nittany Lions to an NIT title in 2009 and an NCAA tournament berth in 2011.

DeChellis' years at East Tennessee State yielded three conference division titles and one NCAA tournament berth.

[1] DeChellis was the head coach of the East Tennessee State University men's basketball program from 1996 to 2003, winning three Southern Conference north division titles (2000–03).

Despite DeChellis' widely critiqued decision to release promising sophomore Milos Bogetic from his scholarship,[2] the 2007–08 Nittany Lions entertained hopes of being a dark-horse contender in the Big Ten Conference and possibly even winning enough games to get into the NCAA tournament.

Those hopes were quickly disintegrated when senior forward Geary Claxton went down with an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January.