Rutgers Preliminary Roster Preview

CHANGES

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Next, we look the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.  They finished tied for 12th in the 14-team league.  

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 is the second leading scorer for UConn, who had a good year, and Mucahy 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 are #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
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IN THE DRAFT OR TURNING PRO

Player	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	Can Return?
.

Tubelis was runner up for Pac-12 Player of the Year, and he was a great college pleyer.  He led the Pac-12 in scoring, and he led the Wildcats in rebounds and steals.  He was a great college player.

Pelle, Son of Laars, declared for the draft, but has returned to school.

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.
Mawot Mag	17	16	27	9	3.8	1.2
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 #8 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 #170 player in the portal.

The rest may not be huge losses.  Derek Simpson is the #251 player in the portal.  

RETURNING

Player	Games	Starts	Minutes	Points	Rebounds	Assists	FG%	3Pt%	A/TO	Class	Recruiting  Stars	Recruiting Rank
Jeremiah Williams	12	11	27	12	3.4	2.8	44%	21%	1.6	Sr	3
Jamichael Davis	31	14	23	6	3.1	19	37%	22%	1.5	So	3
Emmanuel Ogbole	10	0	8	2	2.0	0.2	44%		0.2	Jr	Unranked
Oskar Palmquist	28	2	11	3	1.4	0.3	43%	30%	0.4	Sr 5	3	389

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."

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 brining in a great recruting class.  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. 

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 leading so much on two freshmen will lead to some serious inconsistency.

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 realize that I am not exactly going out on a limb by such a wishy-washy prediction.  There will be a lot of that this season.  

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.