The selection show was playing on three big-screen TVs, and Steve Pikiell did not have to wait long to let go of his worst fears. He was standing in a conference room filled with players, staff, and family members when, a few minutes into the heart-stopping drama, the Rutgers name flashed before his eyes on the same bracket line with Notre Dame.
The room exploded with the sound of exhilaration and relief. Pikiell wasn’t nervous Sunday until Richmond stole an at-large bid from someone by beating Davidson in the Atlantic 10 final. He didn’t think that someone should be Rutgers, but then again, what if the selection committee started looking sideways at the Scarlet Knights’ loss to Lafayette in the fifth game of the year?
“I hoped they weren’t going to hold a day in November against us,” Pikiell said.
And they didn’t. Rutgers landed an at-large berth into the First Four because Rutgers deserved an at-large berth into the First Four, and after it was official, the 54-year-old Pikiell — recent recipient of a four-year extension that carries him through 2030 — started talking about much bigger long-term things than winning a game or two in the tournament.
“You can compete for a national championship here, and that’s been my goal since I took the job,” Pikiell told The Post. “I think if you can win in this league you are hardened enough to compete for a national championship. I want to go to a Final Four.”
If you knew the Rutgers coach from his playing days, you knew this was possible. While trying to help Jim Calhoun build something special at UConn, Pikiell had suffered two shoulder dislocations and two concussions during his freshman year, and needed a CAT scan on the eve of his first Big East Tournament game. He went out and scored 27 points against Boston College anyway, making his first trip to Madison Square Garden more memorable than he imagined it could be.
The shoulder injury and surgery would dramatically alter his career path, effectively turning Calhoun’s 6-foot-4 captain into Calhoun’s 6-4 player-coach. Pikiell would later build his own dominant regular-season program at Stony Brook that would invent ways to lose in the America East tournament, each sudden-death defeat more heartbreaking than the one preceding it, until the Seawolves finally ended the misery in 2016.
Pikiell got the Rutgers offer from AD Pat Hobbs at the Tick Tock Diner, across the street from the Garden, where the former UConn guard had that career night against BC. Pikiell headed to Piscataway with his Stony Brook assistant, Jay Young, now the head coach at Fairfield.
“When we got there,” Young said, “you can make an argument that it was the worst Power 5 program in the country.”
How bad was it? The Scarlet Knights had lost 33 of the 36 conference games they had played since joining the Big Ten. In the early practices in Year 1, Young said it was clear that Pikiell was the best ball-handler in the gym. He wasn’t kidding.
“So Steve got some under-recruited kids who fit his personality, and he developed those guys,” Young said. “I don’t know if we had one Big Ten recruit. I can’t describe to you how bad those first few practices were. I used to walk out of the RAC and look up at the banners of the schools in our league, the Indianas and Michigan States, and to think Steve just finished fourth in that league is incredible. He’s done as good a job at building a program as any coach in the country.”
Pikiell did it by turning Atlantic 10 recruits into Big Ten players. Rutgers was dead last in the conference when he arrived, 14th out of 14 teams, and some in and around the program thought finishing 10th in the Big Ten would be a hell of an achievement.
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After leading the Scarlet Knights to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 30 years, and to their first NCAA victory in nearly four decades, Pikiell just put them in the NCAAs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1976, when they reached the Final Four with an unbeaten record. Only the pandemic stopped Pikiell from becoming the first Rutgers coach ever to advance to The Dance three straight years.
“I think he’s a visionary,” said his senior guard Geo Baker. “When we first got here there was none of this. … We were a bunch of underrated guys, he was an underrated coach, and he just did a good job of finding people with the same mentality that he had.”
Said classmate and fellow Rutgers star Ron Harper Jr.: “Everything Coach Pikiell talked about on my recruiting visit is playing out before my eyes.”
No, not too many fans or guardians of the sport shared that vision six years ago.
“When we first sat down,” Pikiell recalled, “people said, ‘This is where coaches go to die.’ We just saw it a little bit differently.”
Steve Pikiell saw it Sunday the way the selection committee saw it. Against all odds, he has turned Rutgers into an NCAA Tournament regular, and has established enough credibility to make his long-term national-title ambitions sound, you know, plausible.
MEET THE SCARLET KNIGHTS
Location: Piscataway, N.J.
Enrollment: 77,800
Coach: Steve Pikiell (sixth season)
Last NCAA appearance: 2021
NCAA Tournament history: Seven appearances, 6-8
How they got here: With a furious final five weeks that saw Rutgers knock off Wisconsin and Indiana on the road, and get by Ohio State, Michigan State and Illinois at home. The emergence of playmaking guard Paul Mulcahy and rugged big man Cliff Omoruyi lessened the pressure on co-stars Geo Baker and Ron Harper Jr., making this a much tougher team to defend.
Starters
G Geo Baker (12.4 ppg, 3.8 apg, 1.2 spg)
G Paul Mulcahy (9.0 ppg, 5.3 apg, 4.1 rpg)
G Caleb McConnell (6.5 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 2.1 apg)
F Ron Harper Jr. (15.6 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.8 apg)
C Cliff Omoruyi (11.8 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 1.3 bpg)
Key reserves
G Aundre Hyatt (4.4 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 0.6 apg)
F Dean Reiber (3.0 ppg, 1.2 rpg, 0.4 apg)
F Mawot Mag (3.0 ppg, 1.9 rpg, 0.3 spg)
Player to watch
A three-level scorer, Ron Harper Jr. has improved in each of his four seasons at Rutgers. The son of five-time NBA champion Ron Harper, the senior has posted career-bests in points (15.9), 3-point shooting (39 percent) and free-throw percentage (79.5 percent).
Key numbers
12 — Program-record Big Ten conference wins
7 — Victories over other teams in the tournament
5.3 — Paul Mulcahy’s assists per game, the first Rutgers player to average at least five assists in a season since Brian Ellerbe in 1985.
1975-76 — The last time Rutgers reached consecutive NCAA Tournaments.
491 — Geo Baker’s career assists, the third most in school history.
