The Rutgers University men’s basketball program saw a 2023 that was bookended by a pair of five-star recruits agreeing to take their talents to New Brunswick, as Ace Bailey of McEachern (Powder Springs, Ga.) and Dylan Harper of Don Bosco Prep (New Brunswick, N.J.) announced their college decisions in January and December of that year, respectively.
From that point forward, there was a certain aura in the air as the Scarlet Knights’ faithful knew the start of something special was on the horizon. There high expectations were met with the school landing at No. 25 in the AP’s preseason poll, marking just the third time in program history that they’ve began a season ranked.
Unfortunately for all of those at the New Jersey campus, those high expectations were nothing more than smokes and mirrors. In what may go down as the worst season in school history when factoring in where they thought they’d be versus where they’re going to finish, both Bailey and Harper remain top three prospects for the 2025 NBA Draft.
So how in the world did this all go so bad?
Rutgers Will Finish Below .500 and Miss the Big Dance
There’s just no way of sugarcoating the disaster that unfolded before head coach Steve Pikiell. The head coach, like everyone else, had visions of dancing come March but instead will have a miserable offseason beginning earlier than expected. Not only will Rutgers have to live with being one of the few preseason Top 25 teams to miss the tournament altogether, but the program will have to move forward without their clear-cut top two players.
With one game to go, Rutgers sits at 14-16 overall and 7-12 in Big Ten play. It will also finish 1-7 against ranked teams. It’s a pretty unremarkable record for a team spearheaded by this type of top-end talent. The problem, however, is that the roster has a low talent level outside two players, and when that’s the case, it’s nearly impossible to win in this day and age of college basketball.
The defense has been pitiful for Rutgers, allowing the second most points in the Big Ten — it is ranked 308th nationally in that category — along with the second most rebounds allowed. With no defensive or interior presence, this squad lacked any pushback to the opposition with far too many lapses. They’ve given up 80-plus points in nine of its last 13 games, including Tuesday’s 100-spot to No. 18 Purdue. By comparison, Duke hasn’t had a single opponent eclipse 78.
The defense is lacking, and the two stars don’t have anything to work with. With such a young and inexperienced team with two extremes in terms of skill level on the roster, there has been no cohesion offensively. That explains why Rutgers has the second fewest assists in the conference. There’s just no flow for this team outside of letting Harper and Bailey do their thing.
Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey Remain Top 3 Prospects
At this point in the college basketball season, it’s becoming increasingly clear what the top of the NBA Draft board will look like this June. Duke’s Cooper Flagg is far and away the consensus No. 1. Behind him are the two Rutgers phenoms. Despite their team’s poor performance, NBA brass are not going to shy away from projecting these two as cornerstone pieces at the next level. It may sound funny that a team who couldn’t make the tournament has this sort of next-level talent on their team, but Rutgers is proving to be an anomaly.
When the program entered this season with its massive expectations, a lot of it had to do with believing the lineup could be rounded out with a handful of transfers that accompanied Harper and Bailey. That idea completely fell flat, as Tyson Acuff, Jordan Derkack, P.J. Hayes IV, and Zach Martini combined for 18 points per game. That level of production was expected. Granted, it wasn’t all of their faults. Rutgers, in its totality, failed to exhume much chemistry nor consistency, so it quickly became an uphill battle for them after their 4-0 start. Harper and Bailey have combined for 48.4% of Rutgers’ scoring.
Harper leads Rutgers in scoring (19.1) as well as assists (4.0). Likewise, Bailey is right behind in points (18.0) while leading in rebounds (7.1). To highlight just how dramatic the lack of depth is on this team, look no further than the third leading scorer below eight points. This is why Rutgers has proven to be an easy team to defend against, even if it has so much talent in Harper and Bailey. Opponents have zero reason to fear anyone else with the ball in their hands, so throwing the kitchen sink at the NBA hopefuls has become a frequent move all season.
Rutgers Not Alone in Failing to Meet Expectations
While Rutgers is the butt end of jokes at the moment, it is not the first team, nor will it be the last to completely miss following the preseason hype. Kentucky, long known for landing five-star recruits with NBA aspirations, has had multiple seasons meet similar fates as Rutgers’. Their 2012-13 season had massive hype before missing out on the tourney, though that had a lot to do with Nerlens Noel (a future No. 6 pick) suffering a season-ending injury. The 2020-21 COVID-season for the Jayhawks was miserable, too. As was it for Duke. The early 1990s also saw the Chris Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal-led LSU Tigers never get past the second round for four consecutive years in which eat least one of those generational talents was on the roster. Bailey and Harper may not be Jackson and Shaq, but not making the tourney is tough.
All of those teams came in with monster expectations and none were short on NBA talent. Recency bias will have people believing Rutgers’ collapse is the worst ever, but that might be an overreaction. What isn’t an overreaction, though, is that the 2024-25 season is the worst campaign in school history. Not only will Rutgers not be dancing and without their best two players a year from now, the school will also risk dropping back into the losing culture that plagued them for a decade beginning in 2006 after this small glimmer of hope came and went. It’s not fun to think back on that 10-year stretch of sub-.500 hoops, but it’s hard to imagine Rutgers ever landing another pair of five-stars in the same class. Rutgers last went to the NCAA Final Four in 1976 and it may not get another shot like this in a long time.
