The concept of taking part in at the Garden got here not from Rutgers, however from the Big Ten Conference, which needs to increase its presence in the nation’s largest media market. That was, in any case, the premise for inviting Rutgers into the Big Ten greater than a decade in the past — as if Piscataway have been simply one other leafy suburb throughout the river.
As basketball coaches are wont to do, Pikiell didn’t precisely embrace the concept. As he noticed it, he wasn’t gaining an expertise he referred to as “spectacular” afterward. He was shedding a house sport at the raucous Jersey Mike’s Arena, which has as formidable a home-court benefit as exists in the Big Ten.
Holloway, a former soccer participant at Stanford, noticed the larger profit from his seat.
“A sports program, if you’re doing it right, can be an amazing thing for the community,” mentioned Holloway, who has been frank sufficient to acknowledge that the Rutgers athletic program, which is perpetually in the crimson, will in all probability by no means be self-sustaining. “This puts our name out there.”
Rutgers’s board of governors adopted alongside this month by approving a contract extension for Pikiell, a former UConn guard who spent a decade teaching at Stony Brook earlier than he was employed in 2016.
“We want Steve to know Rutgers is the place we want him to be,” Pat Hobbs, the Rutgers athletic director, mentioned of the extension.
The board’s approval comes shortly after Rutgers handed top-ranked Purdue what till Saturday night time was its solely loss and the Knights obtained a dedication from Airious Bailey, a ahead from Georgia who’s amongst the prime prospects in the class of 2024. Rutgers can be hopeful of touchdown one other elite recruit from that class, Dylan Harper, the youthful brother of Ron Harper Jr., who completed at Rutgers final season.
The elder Harper was amongst a bunch who in 2021 lifted the Scarlet Knights to the N.C.A.A. event for the first time in 30 years. Among the few holdovers from that workforce is Caleb McConnell, a sinewy 6-foot-7 guard from Jacksonville, Fla., who wasn’t anyone’s concept of a blue chipper when he arrived.
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