This was some years back, at a time when Steve Pikiell was quietly building the template for how to create a basketball program out of the dust, practically from scratch. The first year at Stony Brook was 4-24, the third 7-23. Even then, he would talk like a coach with 700 wins in his pocket, not a lifetime record of 20-67.
“The job is the same here as it is at Duke, at Kansas, at Villanova,” Pikiell said. “You give an honest day’s work. You put in the effort. You recruit good kids. You get those kids to trust you. You teach them what you know. It isn’t magic. It isn’t luck.”
That was March of 2010, and Pikiell had just led his Seawolves to their first-ever Division I regular-season championship — and had then suffered their first of several postseason heartbreaks, knocked out by Boston University in the America East playoffs. Pikiell was already seen as a coach on the come. All you had to do was watch his teams play, even if Stony Brook still seemed like a member of the sport’s wilderness.
It is 13 years later now, and Pikiell is the prince of Piscataway, reigning over a popular Rutgers program that has earned a fun reputation these past few years as plucky upstarts, taking down Big Ten teams, returning to the NCAA Tournament, creating one of the most intimidating home courts anywhere. It’s been a fun story. Two years ago, Pikiell said, “It’s still the same job.” It explains a lot about who he is, to where the Scarlet Knights have come.
And now comes something else. Something else entirely.
Now comes Dylan Harper, by all accounts the second-best high school player in the Class of 2024. He joins Ace Bailey, the consensus No. 3. Harper — son of Ron, brother of Ron Jr. — will be lighting it up for Don Bosco Prep this winter before moving his game about 60 miles down the Turnpike next year. Rutgers beat out Duke, among others, for his services.
For decades, the biggest athletic coup in school history was when an anonymous Rutgers assistant named Richie Vitale convinced Phil Sellers to cross the bridges from Brooklyn’s Thomas Jefferson High and land in New Brunswick, where in 1976 he led the Knights to their first — thus far only — Final Four. Bailey was a pretty good candidate to replace that. Now the commitment of Harper builds a shelf all by itself.
“I have been around him and the program for such a long time, and no one works harder at his job than Coach Pikiell,” Harper told ESPN Wednesday. “He gets the most out of each player and his team. I trust him to do what’s right for the team. He is such an uplifting person and coach. He is always helping others whether it’s on the court, in the program or in the community. He puts others before himself in everything he does.”
College basketball has become something of a cynical hinterland in recent years. Gone is even a whiff of pretense about how business is conducted. But you can spend years looking for someone who’ll throw a verbal haymaker at Pikiell. It isn’t possible. And so this isn’t just a win for Rutgers, and it isn’t just a win for college hoops in the greater metro area, where for at least the immediate future we’ll have Rutgers bookending whatever Rick Pitino can ultimately build at St. John’s.
It’s a win for guys who still believe in the power of putting in an honest day’s work. Sometimes they do it in the wilds of Suffolk County. Sometimes they get to work the sport’s biggest rooms, and coach its best players. Yep. That’s a big win.
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