Aside from after Steve Pikiell’s first year at Rutgers in 2016-17, the Scarlet Knights have only suffered one high-profile transfer the last three seasons and that was Eugene Omoruyi.
The same can be said about his staff, which has only lost Jay Young to a head coaching gig at Fairfield.
Staying together has been a key reason why Rutgers has risen from the bottom of the Big Ten, and pretty much landed in the 2019-2020 NCAA Tournament if there was one.
“...That we haven't had a lot of transfers, that's helped us continue to build our roster,” Pikiell recently said on an online video call with fans and play-by-play announcer Jerry Recco. “Geo (Baker) has been around for four years. People know them. I mean, we never had that continuity. We were losing our roster the past 12 years before my staff got here. It's hard enough to win games and when you're redoing your roster and your staff every year makes it really, really difficult.”
In the past, players who transfered from a Division I school to another Division I school had to sit out a season per NCAA rules. But the NCAA Division I Council is expected to discuss a one-time transfer rule on April 24 and vote on it on May 20.
The NCAA does give out waivers to players to play right away after moving on to a different university, but not everyone.
“It will be (implemented),” Pikiell said. “It's already that. I think today there's 680 kids in the transfer portal right now. Kids are deciding on schools right now without even visiting campuses. We're in a coronavirus, a pandemic, it's just gonna add to the chaos of the whole thing. I'm in favor of the rule being implemented because I think it's good timing of it. I think that's good. I think the last thing we need now is kids committing to schools where they have never met a team member, or met a coach personally or visited a campus. I think this probably isn't the right time for it would be implemented but the rule is definitely gonna get passed. Any rule that can help student-athletes I'm for…”
Even without the rule currently, players from all over the nation are putting their name in the hat so to speak and transferring daily. With the possible new waiver, more and more players could opt to transfer.
Pikiell said keeping his team intact is tough.
“Yeah, it keeps getting harder and harder. I mean currently we don't have any scholarships (to add anyone). We're in a good place,” Pikiell said. “But you've got to be real smart nowadays because for every transfer you take you're probably losing a player in your program. I think we're going to continue to take special kids. I think the guys that we've taken in the past have done really well, but I think it's been well thought out. It's been a kid that fits what we need. Akwasi Yeboah is a perfect example. He has a 3.7 grade point average in grad school. Our graduate programs are elite, so you need to get great students to get in there. I think CJ Gettys was a really good student. He got into grad school and he filled that void. We had no size and Akwasi filled a huge void, too. We needed some maturity and we needed a shooter. I think we've done a really good job.”
Rutgers right now doesn’t have an open to scholarship, but that could change during the spring or summer.
“I think you really got to do your homework. I think you really got to find out the reasons why they're transferring to begin with,” Pikiell said. “Some kids transfer and have unrealistic expectations and they can come to your place and have that same problem or same issue. And that's why I think it's a really hard time right now to take a transfer. I want my kids to come and visit for 48 hours. I want them to meet all the guys on my team and like the team. I want them to watch us practice. I don't want to give a kid a video of the next door down the street. He needs to really understand what we're all about and what our team is all about. So I think right now it's really hard not to take any transfer or any player, but everyone's doing it and there's a lot of them on the market. I think you got to be real smart in how you go about that. I like my team a lot for next year so you have to be really careful in what we add to it.”
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisWasky.
