Four-Star guard RJ Moore commits to Rutgers Basketball
Class of 2027 four-star guard RJ Moore out of North Carolina has committed to Rutgers Basketball following an official visit to campus.
Last edited:
BB Recruiting Four-Star G RJ Moore commits to Rutgers Basketball
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
So where are the boneheads saying how badly Pikiell F'ed up by not going hard for Douby. Pike got his #1 SG guard target and who I believe is a Top 60 recruit.
They also said not a single good recruit would ever come play for Pike. And while it’s clear Schiano needs to go and should absolutely be fired there is the same over top sentiment of doomsday with the “no good coach will ever come here” , lwe should leave the big 10”, “If Zinn doesn’t fire him by Monday she will be a successful AD”.
Huge news.
Amazing what a little money will do.
Amazing what a little money will do.
Over the last forty (!!!) years here's how many seasons each Rutgers MBB head coach has won 7+ conference games:
Steve Pikiell 7x
Eddie Jordan 0x
Mike Rice 0x
Fred Hill 0x
Gary Waters 3x
Kevin Bannon 1x
Bob Wenzel 4x
Over the past two generations (!!!!) of Rutgers basketball, Steve Pikiell has won 7+ conference games ONE fewer time than the previous six(!!) Rutgers basketball HCs combined.
It is certainly fair to question whether the new NIL landscape is an environment that Coach Pikiell is equipped to navigate. That is a fair discussion.
But Pikiell is the best MBB HC at Rutgers since some posters grandparents attended games. And (imo) Coach Pikiell is the best HC equipped to get us back to the standard he himself has set as to what success looks like On the Banks.
Steve Pikiell 7x
Eddie Jordan 0x
Mike Rice 0x
Fred Hill 0x
Gary Waters 3x
Kevin Bannon 1x
Bob Wenzel 4x
Over the past two generations (!!!!) of Rutgers basketball, Steve Pikiell has won 7+ conference games ONE fewer time than the previous six(!!) Rutgers basketball HCs combined.
It is certainly fair to question whether the new NIL landscape is an environment that Coach Pikiell is equipped to navigate. That is a fair discussion.
But Pikiell is the best MBB HC at Rutgers since some posters grandparents attended games. And (imo) Coach Pikiell is the best HC equipped to get us back to the standard he himself has set as to what success looks like On the Banks.
Most of his tenure we’ve played 18-20 conference games. Means nothing. The bar is low. The fact that he might be the best basketball coach we’ve had in while is more of an indictment on our previous mess of coaches than anything else.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
We played 16-18 conference games before the B1G, so it’s not a huge difference.
The bar is no so low that we include number of seasons under (but close to) .500 as part of a measure of success.
He’s 71-89 in the B1G over the last 8 seasons. He’s finished .500 or better in conference 4 of the last 7 seasons. He’s finished 4th in conference (got a double bye in the B1G tournament) and hasn’t had Rutgers play the first day of the B1G tournament since his 2nd year.
Must have been the athlete Keli alluded to in her interview
Wins? How do you cherry pick that stat. It’s wins.
Ive tracked every Pikiell season and have published the stats here several times. I'm away and will share with you when i get back. You'll see.
Blending in 3-4 years to mask the horror of the last 3 is a starter.
I m sure you wont care but i belive in all facts.. and yeah.. i was a fan 4 years ago too. Then i saw..
Being the best out of that group doesn't mean you're good, only that you're better than a bunch of mostly crappy coaches.
We don’t need to cherry pick stats or get hyperbolic to discuss Pike. For a period of time he legitimately rebuilt the program and made us very respectable and we were on the upward trajectory, then a massive change was made to the college basketball ecosystem, of which Pike/Rutgers was poorly equipped and too stubborn to adapt to, and the program has undeniably been on the downturn. However, it seems the biggest issue plaguing our team has been improved with Zinn and Sullivan additions, and last year we saw despite our talent deficit Pike is able to keep his teams at a respectable level of play that a few B1G teams were not able to do, even if not at a levelwhere the program needs to be. He at the very least deserves a chance with an actually competitive budget and it seems he’s had a solid offseason. Hopefully, we will be able to return to a respectable basketball team.
With the exception of the year, Pikiel had with Ace and Dylan, Pikiel does an incredible job with the players he has. There is no doubt that he has struggled to get Big Ten level players in the NIL era.
This year Pikiell should be closer to the other Big Ten teams in talent so it will be interesting to see what he can do with the team he has this year. Hopefully it will lead us to another winning season. His recruitment of Moore suggests there are quality players who have confidence in him staying.
Or maybe it means Rutgers isn’t the easiest place to have success coaching basketball.
The thing about Pike, is that any immediate hot seat talk for him is mostly isolated to his complete failure to manage a roster with 2 super stars on it. No question - that was HORRIBLE, but in the big picture, it simply shows that he’s not really cut out naturally to manage a team with 2 day one super stars on it. Not every coach is - but then, how often will RU land 2 kids like that again anyway? That inability has zero to do though with whether or not he could he could do well with a focus on RHJ type recruiting and coaching up kids with chips on their shoulders. The type of coaching Puke has shown he can do well at. The year Cam and Paul left, wasn’t really his fault (or at least, I again understood why that team turned out not to be very good). He busted with Ace and Dylan and then suffered the hangover effect with recruiting last year (along with not having financial resources).
The bottom line is given recruiting is trending up - a 500 record would show enough progress not to focus on starting over. He can’t lose multiple cupcakes.
Even among Pike supporters, no one is sugar coating the fact that he **** the bed in 2024-5. But the overall body of work isn’t terrible and he can still recruit and develop players. I would have liked a change in the assistant coaching, but I’m eager to see what he can do with at least competitive money. It’s never been a level playing field for Rutgers and he made it work before NIL made it laughably uneven and I’m optimistic he can do it again. Clearly pulling top 50 recruits is a good sign people with skin in the game believe in him.
Yes, this will be a very interesting year and i am rooting for him..but he needs to perform..in season not camp hype or recruiting.
But I gave up rooting for Rutgers sports on Thursday night...
I think we all agree on this (except for the folks rooting for failure so they can say they were right).
Great news. Needed something positive today.Four-Star guard RJ Moore commits to Rutgers Basketball
Class of 2027 four-star guard RJ Moore out of North Carolina has committed to Rutgers Basketball following an official visit to campus.www.on3.com
Jeez, I know some have questioned Ace and Dylan’s effort level when they were at RU but calling them high is a bridge too far.
I don’t think that exactly tells the whole story either though. There’s no doubt he was in over his head with Dylan and Ace but following that season it was going to be next to impossible to turn things around the following season (particularly with very limited funds to recruit). If anything, Pike did about as good a job as we couldve hoped working with the group he had last season. His 22-23 team would’ve made the field of 76. That team was one of the first few teams out of the field.
Watching how the NIL world evolved, I don’t think it’s fair to hold the 23-24 season against Pike. Rules now exist to prevent what Cam and Paul did to us. Would it have been helpful for Pike to have more of the mean streak street smarts in him to anticipate those departures in his planning? Of course. But those kind of blindsides aren’t in the cards for the future. By all counts - that 23-24 team would’ve been much much better with those 2 players he thought he had on it.
So as I said - Pike belonged on the chopping block primarily for mishandling Ace and Dylan. Following that disaster, he had his hands full to prevent a historically poor 25-26 team. In my view, he passed that test and stabilized his program for 26-27 which was the best we could’ve hoped. Has he done enough to get us into a field of 76? I’m not sure, but the bar is probably a bit lower TBH - he needs to show YOY improvement. Hopefully he can do that.
I should also add - I was particularly hard on Pike for playing Denis early, but reflecting back, our options at the 4 were very limited last year so seeing what he had with Badalau early wasn’t really as bad a coaching decision as it seemed.
Well been thin at the 4 again this year and the biggest questions IMO regarding our potential will be 1) whether Sydnor is an upgrade over Grant. And 2) whether the answer to 1 is yes or not, when Sydnor is not in the game, do we have a better defensive combination wing at the 3/4 to put in the game with Buchanan than we had last year. Zrno or Powers at the 3 didn’t work very well for us. And Nwuli / Denis didn’t play much as the back up to Grant. So we always had a sizable hole. If Diego / Buchanan at the 3 / 4 or Jones (in place of one of those 2) is a major defensive upgrade for us, that would be big. I’m not expecting Chris Wooten to come in and be a solid defensive 3 as a true frosh. And Powers was weak on D last year so I don’t expect him to be a defensive boost playing the 3 out of position this season either (he’s undersized for the 3). Smith stinks at defense so I’m not expecting much there either.
Well been thin at the 4 again this year and the biggest questions IMO regarding our potential will be 1) whether Sydnor is an upgrade over Grant. And 2) whether the answer to 1 is yes or not, when Sydnor is not in the game, do we have a better defensive combination wing at the 3/4 to put in the game with Buchanan than we had last year. Zrno or Powers at the 3 didn’t work very well for us. And Nwuli / Denis didn’t play much as the back up to Grant. So we always had a sizable hole. If Diego / Buchanan at the 3 / 4 or Jones (in place of one of those 2) is a major defensive upgrade for us, that would be big. I’m not expecting Chris Wooten to come in and be a solid defensive 3 as a true frosh. And Powers was weak on D last year so I don’t expect him to be a defensive boost playing the 3 out of position this season either (he’s undersized for the 3). Smith stinks at defense so I’m not expecting much there either.
Pike did so well with Harper and Bailey. This recruit is for next year, so after a great senior season, programs with deeper pockets might come knocking.
The program under Pike is dead. 5 year declining program with no end is sight. Who has he developed over the last 5 years?
Latest
-
01
The Knight Report
Greg Schiano previews Rutgers Football versus USC + Recruiting Tidbits - TKR Pod
-
02
The Knight Report
Join The Knight Report TODAY for $1 and get 50% off!
-
03
The Knight Report
2026-27 Rutgers Basketball Schedule: Dates, Opponents, & TV
-
04
The Knight Report
The 2026-27 Rutgers Women's Basketball Schedule
-
05
The Knight Report Football
College Football 27 Sim - Rutgers Football versus USC Trojans