STATE COLLEGE — D.J. Newbill is a poster boy for Penn State basketball before he even takes a shot for his new team.

From all accounts, the transfer from Southern Miss has the credentials for his sudden notoriety in Happy Valley. The sophomore is the key addition in Year 2 in Patrick Chambers’ rebuilding project, and the enthusiastic coach isn’t shy about heaping the responsibilities on his new guard.

Penn State opens the season Friday against St. Francis, Pa. Teammates say Newbill can run the floor with top point guard Tim Frazier, and that he has the confidence to call for the ball in crunch time.

What would you expect for a kid from Philadelphia?

“He’s just got that Philly swagger in him,” Frazier said Monday at the team’s media day.

And just what is “Philly swagger?”

“I don’t know,” Frazier joked, “I’m from Texas.”

“Swagger” — let alone Philly swagger — isn’t something that’s normally associated with Penn State basketball, a perennially lower-division Big Ten team that piques national interest every 8 to 10 years or so. For instance, the Nittany Lions went to the NCAA tournament in 2011 in star guard Talor Battle’s final season.

And just like that, the momentum was gone. Battle and three other senior starters graduated. Coach Ed DeChellis left to take the same job at Navy.

In came Chambers, himself a Philadelphia-area native, who infused the program with energy and attitude. They might have finished 12-20, but the gritty Nittany Lions always seemed to give maximum effort, led by Frazier (18.8 points, Big Ten-leading 6.2 assists).

Jermaine Marshall (10.8 points, 4.1 rebounds) gives Penn State another threat from the wing, though the junior has been slowed recently by a minor hamstring injury. Sophomore Ross Travis is such a hard-nosed player that Chambers nicknamed “Junkyard Dog” for doing all the unseen dirty work on the floor.

But Newbill provides an intangible sorely needed for a program looking to make recruiting inroads in the fertile Philadelphia region.

“I’m going to use a very popular word right now: Swagger,” Chambers said. “He just has that `Philly chip.’ He’s got that toughness. He’s from the streets of Philly. He’s going to grind. He’s never going to give up.”