Rutgers Roster Preview - Updated June 2

CHANGES

5/8 - Added link to "Duke, Rutgers have two recruits in top five, but that doesn't guarantee instant success in NCAA Tournament"
Oskar Palmquist leaving to play overseas.
Added transfer PJ Hayes
6/3 Mawot Mag to BYU
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Next, we look the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.  They finished tied for 12th in the 14-team Big Ten  

Like many teams this off-season, their roster is going through a complete overhaul, with 9 new players.  Two of them are big-time prospects.  The other 7 are not.

They are coached by Steve Pikiell, who has been at Rutgers for 8 seasons, and never finished higher than 4th in the B1G.  He has taken them to the tournament twice and has one tournament win.  In his tenure, they have won 41% of their conference games.

Their roster took was hurt last season  when Cam Spencer and Paul Mulcahy transferred out late in the off season.  Spencer was the second leading scorer for UConn, who had a good year, and Mulcahy was a starter for Washington.  I guess they both decided to be Huskies, instead of Scarlet Knights.

Then three of their better players including leading scorer Jeremiah Williams missed parts of the season.  

They had a familiar problem.  They couldn't put the ball in the basket.  They were #357 in effective FG percent, #354 in two-point percent, and #349 in three-point percent.  To complete the trifecta, they were #343 in free-throw percent.  

OTOH, they were an excellent defensive team at #5 in defensive efficiency.  

GRADUATING

Player	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	Notes
Aundre Hyatt	32	27	26	11	4.6	1.2
Noah Fernandes	31	15	20	6	1.8	1.6
Austin Williams	26	9	16	4	2.7	0.6

Hyatt was their second-leading scorer and second in rebounds.  When your second-leading scorer is averaging 10.5 points, you are not a high-scoring team.  Rutgers was #333 out of 362 teams in points per game.  (UCLA was #328.)

Noah Frenandes shot 35% from the floor and still started half their games.  

IN THE DRAFT OR TURNING PRO

Player	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	Can Return?
Oskar Palmquist	28	2	11	3	1.4	0.3	No

Oskar Palmquist is giving up his 5th year of eligibility to pursue a pro career overseas.

TRANSFERRING OUT

This is Bobby Hurley territory, with 6 scholarship players transferring out, including three starters.  

Player	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	Notes	Destination
Clifford Omoruyi	32	32	27	10	8.3	0.5	Led the team in rebounds and blocks.	Alabama
Mawot Mag	17	16	27	9	3.8	1.2		BYU
Derek Simpson	32	25	26	8	3.2	2.9	Led in assists	Saint Joseph's
Antwone Woolfolk	27	6	13	3	3.1	0.5		Miami of Ohio
Antonio Chol	7	0	5	2	0.7	0.0		Howard
Gavin Griffiths	32	3	18	6	2.2	0.6		Nebraska
Daniel Vessey	0						Walk-On

Omoruyi their third-leading scorer.  In addition to leading the team in rebounds, he was #3 in the nation in blocks per game.  He is the #14 player in the transfer portal.   He will be a big loss.

Mawot Mag was a full-time starter, but went down with a knee injury halfway through the season.  He is the #204 player in the portal.

The rest may not be huge losses.  Derek Simpson is the #314 player in the portal.  

RETURNING

STAT	RETURNING
Starts	16%
Minutes	17%
Points	15%
3-Pointers Made	7%
Rebounds	13%
Assists	25%
Steals	22%
Blocks	13%

The Scarlet Knights return perhaps the least production of any Big Ten team which retained their coach.

Player	Size	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	FG%	3Pt%	A/TO	Class	Recruiting  Stars	Recruiting Rank
Jeremiah Williams	6-4 177	12	11	27	12	3.4	2.8	44%	21%	1.6	Sr	3
Jamichael Davis G	6-2 175	31	14	23	6	3.1	1.9	37%	22%	1.5	So	3
Emmanuel Ogbole C	6-10 290	10	0	8	2	2.0	0.2	44%		0.2	Jr	Unranked

Williams missed the season's first 20 games over allegations of violating the NCAA's rules on gambling.  Once he became eligible, he became their leading scorer, but  he was not a great shooter.  

Davis was a part-time starter, but, to stick with the theme, he was not a great shooter.

Ogbole at 6-10 is the only center on the roster and he was a lightly-used sub.  

RECRUITS

Tyson Acuff looks like one of those guys who is a "scorer, not a shooter".  He led the 10^th play team in the MAC in scoring because he took over 1/4^th of the team's shots.  He did also lead the team in assists.

Martini doesn't have great numbers for playing 30 minutes per game.  He was mostly a three-point shooter.  He rarely gets shaken or stirred.

Jordan Derkack was NEC Player of the Year.  

"As a sophomore Derkack averaged 17.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 2.1 steals while shooting .466 from the field, .275 from 3-point range and .724 from the free-throw line. He logged 33 minutes per game and also averaged 4.0 turnovers.  In three road games at Florida, Georgetown and Cincinnati, he averaged 18 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 5.3 turnovers while shooting 54 percent from the field."

P.J. Hayes was the third-leading scorer for the Toreros and Steve Lavin.

Overall, this is not an impressive group of transfers, with nobody who had played at a high-major level.

CONCLUSION
They may have finished 12th in the B1G and are losing 9 rotation players and most of their starters, but they are bringing two great recruits.  Will they be able to bring the excitement to Piscataway?

The two 5-star freshmen seem great.  The rest of the roster seems pretty "meh" to me.   They return three players, only one of whom seemed impressive.  They add in a mediocre transfer class.  Then they have two 5-star McDonald's All Americans.  The rest of their recruiting class looks like filler.

The question is whether a couple of 5-star McDonald's All Americans is enough to compensate for the rest of the roster which isn't very impressive.  I imagine that the two will go off at times this season and lead the team to some big wins.  However, I also suspect that leaning so much on two freshmen will lead to some serious inconsistency.

This team will go as far as Dylan Harper can carry them.  Will he have an All-American year like Brandon Miller?  Can he single-handedly carry this team?  Can he Carmelloize the Scarlet Knights?

Don't color me scarlet.  Color me skeptical.  This is a team with a broad range of possible outcomes.  I can see them finishing anywhere from 4th to 10th in the league.   I think that they are more likely to finish toward the bottom of that range than the top.

Rutgers returns four players and will try to integrate nine new ones. That type of roster churn is becoming much more common in the age of unrestricted transfers and NIL. It also means that it will get even harder to predict how good a team will be.  How hard will it be to teach all the new players the coach's system?  How well with the transfers from minor conferences make the jump to the B1G? 

We won't know until we see the team in action, and probably won't know much until January.  Welcome to the new age of college hoops.

A CBS writer is also skeptical about their chances, citing historical precedents.  Duke, Rutgers have two recruits in top five, but that doesn't guarantee instant success in NCAA Tournament

Torvick projects Rutgers as the #28 team in the country and #6 in the B1G, with a record of 10-12 and 11-9 in the league.

247 picks them to finish 7th.

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Vrooman Picks them to finish 3rd.  I don't buy it.

3. Rutgers Scarlet Knights

Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +21.13 (+7.56 last year)

Coaching Info: Steve Pikiell +1.21 (35th)

5 Highest Rated Players: 6’8 F Ace Bailey (5* Freshman), 6’6 G Dylan Harper (5* Freshman), 6’4 G Tyson Acuff (Eastern Michigan- 21.7 pts, 3.6 reb), 6’5 G Jordan Derkack (Merrimack- 17.0 pts, 6.0 reb), 6’6 G PJ Hayes (San Diego- 10.5 pts, 39.7% 3pt)

Rutgers is a tough job, but Steve Pikiell has handled it as well as anyone has in a long, long time. There had been 5 coaches in 19 years before Pikiell took over and none of them made an NCAA tournament. Pikiell has done it twice and was just short of a 3rd straight year in 2023 but was one of the first teams out thanks in part to a terrible non-con strength of schedule. This past season was a backslide as Rutgers saw heavy portal losses result in actual losses as they kept up a top-ten national defense but had a putrid 298th ranked offense.

Somehow though Pikiell convinced a pair of local top-3 prospects to stay home and so Rutgers of all schools has the most recruiting star power of any school in the country this fall. If both Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper play like top-3 recruits normally play then Rutgers has an extremely high baseline level of performance.

The problem is the supporting cast. Last year’s starting center transferred to Alabama and so his 6’10 backup who played 81 minutes all season is projected to start instead since they struck out with big men transfers. There are several smaller school transfers who came in and should help with the scoring punch. Tyson Acuff and Jordan Derkack are both guards who lit up weaker competition. PJ Hayes is a great shooting wing. Zach Martini was a great role player at Princeton. But if either Harper or Bailey fail to play like premium top-5 NBA draft picks then this roster’s ceiling falls off dramatically and they end up way short of this projection.