The 2008-2009 season finally is over for the Rutgers men’s basketball team…thank goodness. Spare all the talk about the close losses…don’t bring up the ugly 45-42 Seniors’ Day win over a bad USF team. Just lock the door and walk away from what was one terrible Scarlet Knight basketball season. Yes, the play of freshmen Mike Rosario and Greg Echinique was promising on many nights. But the rest of this campaign was tortuous to watch. And there was plenty of disappointment to pass around. Underwhelming senior seasons for J-R Inman and Anthony Farmer. Underachieving by the likes of Hamady N’Diaye and Mike Coburn. A puzzling sophomore season for last year’s All-Big East rookie team member Corey Chandler that may lead to his transfer out of the program. And at the helm is third-year head coach Fred Hill who now has to wonder about his future under a new athletic director in Tim Pernetti. The easy part is to “file and forget” this excruciating season. The hard part is to figure out where do the Scarlet Knights go from here. More on that in a couple of days as we take some time to bury the bad memories of this just-completed season.
11
Mar
09
I liked your response to Jack Ellery with regards to Gary Waters. I don’t care if GW wins 30 games at Cleveland State. I knew that at 6:30pm every Selection Sunday, as long as Gary Waters was at the helm, Rutgers never would be in the mix. The hell with the NIT. I think Mulcahy knew that as well. I’m not saying that Fred Hill will be successful, it’s just that Rosario and Echenique are closer to blue-chips than anyone that Waters ever recruited. There’s always THAT CHANCE that they are the next Sellers and Dabney.
Well, Peter..I guess we’ll never know how successful Waters would have been at RU. You can only look at his resume and extrapolate based on it. Fred Hill can recruit as you aptly stated but he can’t coach. Somewhere between the technical knowledge and recruiting ability, there lies an intangilble which makes someone a head coach. Based on this year’s team performance and the performance of key players, Hill doesn’t have this head coach intangible. He’s an assistant or recruiting director at best. Waters got much more out of his players than Hill has so far. There’s a reason why he was never a head coach in 24 years in hoops. Everyone previously could see it except the politician, Mulcahey. Next year is Hill’s last year at RU, if he survives it.