Rutgers athletic director Pat Hobbs consulted with former UConn coach Jim Calhoun several times before hiring Steve Pikiell as the school’s new basketball coach — and Calhoun’s endorsement seems to have played a key role in Pikiell’s hiring.
“I talked to Mr. Hobbs about 10 days ago and then talked to him again and all I know is [Pikiell] is the head coach at Rutgers,” Calhoun told SNY.tv Saturday afternoon by phone. “Steve Pikiell in my opinion is a great choice. I think it’s a great day for Rutgers He’s a great combination of a lot differrent things. He brings winning, he has tenacity, [he] built a program, and I think it’s a great day for Steve and for Rutgers.”
Calhoun, 73, won three NCAA Championships at UConn and is a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame. Pikiell was Calhoun’s point guard from 1987-91. The Hall of Fame coach was on hand last Saturday when Stony Brook beat Vermont to secure its first-ever NCAA Tournament bid.
Pikiell is due to be introduced as the new Rutgers coach at a press conference on Tuesday.
Rhode Island coach Dan Hurley and George Washington coach Mike Lonergan were offered the job before Pikiell, but Calhoun said that doesn’t matter.
“It’s like a doctor, the first guy and the last guy in the class are doctors,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun said he wasn’t the first guy targeted at Northeastern and it worked out OK.
“When I took the Northeastern job many, many years ago I was the fifth guy taken,” he said. “I was only a high school coach.”
Calhoun said Pikiell knows the Northeast footprint from his time at UConn and in the Big East.
“He’s a basketball guy, No. 1,” Calhoun said. “Secondly, he’s a guy who’s done team-building. You have to hire a guy who understands where you are and what you guys do. I was from the area. The Big East was my conference.”
By contrast, Calhoun said, Eddie Jordan “was an NBA coach” and Gary Waters “was from Ohio.”
“We were in the Big East, Steve was raised on that,” Calhoun said by way of contrast.
Calhoun said he spoke with Pikiell on Saturday and will talk to him again on Sunday.
One key aspect of their conversations, Calhoun said, will be the makeup of Pikiell’s staff. It appears that Jay Young, Pikiell’s associate head coach, has a strong chance to replace Pikiell at Stony Brook, meaning he will have at least one vacancy on his staff.
Numerous New Jersey high school and AAU coaches told SNY.tv it’s important that Pikeill, who was born in Bristol, Conn., have some New Jersey ties on his staff.
“It’s important to have someone with Jersey/New York ties and someone who can recruit the elite programs, both high school and AAU,” Hudson Catholic coach Nick Mariniello, whose team features Class of 2018 guards Jahvon Quinerly and Luther Muhammad, told SNY.tv. “It’s all about relationships.”
Calhoun, who coached in the Big East against Rutgers for many years, understands this well.
“One of the things we’ll be talking about [with Pikiell] is the makeup of the staff becomes incredibly important,” Calhoun said.
“Not only next year’s class that you have coming [needs to be] maintained, but what are you doing over the next couple of years to make sure you gets kids that you should get. Putting that staff together is going to become incredibly important for recruiting and you need X’s and O’s and you need a coach who can develop players. You’re taking care of today but you’re making sure that Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 are all going forward, too. So those are the kinds of things we’ll be talking about.”
The facilities issue has also been critical at Rutgers, which lags far behind other Big Ten and other BCS schools in that area.
“You can tell me all about they don’t have a facility,” Calhoun said. “We won an NIT and also lost to Christian Laettner in the Final 8. Those two things happend in our first four years playing in the old field house, so i don’t believe that.”
On the recruiting front, Calhoun knows that schools like UConn, Kentucky, Louisville, Duke and Syracuse have been cherry-picking New Jersey’s best players for years and stressed that Pikiell and his staff need to recruit not only the Garden State but the Empire State, too.
“I think Jersey kids are very important but I also think New York City is important,” Calhoun said.
“You think of Charlie Villanueva, you think of Ben Gordon, you think of Kemba Walker, some of the really good New York kids that we got. They should get involved with that, too.”
And the message should be you can stay home and play in front of friends and family — and with players you know — in the Big Ten.
“Why shouldn’t they stay home?” Calhoun asked. “You’ve gotta convince kids it can be a great expeince to stay home and play [in front of] your family. It’s a great opportunity they have to play basketball and attend 20-someting Big Ten basketball games with your family. They have an opportunity. It isn’t going to be easy. It never is, that’s why they’ve changed coaches so many times.”
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