It's almost never a bad move for an established head coach to hire on a former head coach to his staff. As long as the dynamics are all right. In the case of Jim Ferry, who is scheduled to be announced as Patrick Chambers' new assistant early next week, they are.

Ferry has been a head coach for 18 years, the last five at Duquesne where he was fired in March. No one has made a serious go of it at Duquesne in decades. Before that, Ferry built Long Island-Brooklyn over 10 years from a low-major backwater into an NCAA team for three straight years (the first two his, 2011 and 2012). And before that, the New York native was a hugely successful Division III coach at Adelphi in NYC where his teams went 82-11 (1999-2002).

Ferry, now 50, is happy just to get back in the game. He is not looking to take the head coach's job, only hoping to gain his footing again after a rough stretch in Pittsburgh.

And you would think Ferry has a specific purpose. He is known as a laid-back players' coach and Chambers likely sees a personality counterpoint to himself as well as a veteran X-n-O ace to add to his young staff.

Ferry is not being hired to improve Penn State's defense. The Nittany Lions already have a worthy defensive mentor in Chambers.

What Ferry will offer is offensive knowhow. He is all about putting the ball in the hole. His teams at LIU-Brooklyn got shots up at a national-best rate and played at a withering tempo. Chambers coached his early Lions against Ferry's Blackbirds twice and saw that firsthand.

From a 17-38 start his first two years at LIU-Brooklyn, Ferry built his program brick by brick over a full decade into the Northeast Conference regular-season and tournament champions in back-to-back seasons. Alas, the Blackbirds were installed as 16 seeds in both 2011 (when they made the NCAAs for the first time in 14 years and lost to Harrison Barnes and North Carolina 102-87 in Charlotte) and in 2012 (when they lost to Draymond Green and Michigan State 89-67 in Columbus).

Ferry knows how to get players to work together and play with alacrity. His 2011 Blackbirds played at the third-fastest tempo (among 345 D-I teams) in the nation and upped it to second-fastest in 2012.

Not only that, LIU-Brooklyn ranked in the top 10 in 2011 in both offensive rebounds and free throw/field goal ratio. That means, though there is no stat kept on such a thing, they quite likely took more shots at the basket of all kinds than any team in America.

They weren't just shots, but good shots. The Blackbirds averaged in the top 20th percentile in the nation in both 3-point and 2-point field goal percentage (not to mention free-throw percentage). That all adds up to a ton of points. They scored 81.4 per game in 2012, second in the nation.

So, what happened at Duquesne? Not much good. In taking over for Ron Everhart in 2012-13, Ferry was essentially cashing in ($600,000 annual salary) while knowing he had little chance of raising the perpetually downtrodden Dukes above .500.

He did make it that high (17-17) in 2016 after starting 15-7 and 5-4 in the Atlantic 10. But, Duquesne is a hopeless case; it has not made an NCAA tournament in four decades and has won one NCAA game in the last 65 years (Saint Joseph's in 1969).

Will Ferry be able to help Penn State recruit serious New York City talent? Probably not. Even his LIU-Brooklyn teams were composed largely of a Texas pipeline with only two New Yorkers on the roster.

But that's not why Chambers hired him. Ferry is here to be a calming and mature influence along with offering offensive expertise. That's why you hire a longtime former head coach -- when you're lucky enough to find one free.