Written from 31 named sources · Oct 2 · first result Playing for Pikiell: Rutgers' 2026-27 Season, Game by Game PISCATAWAY, N.J. — There is a parking lot off Route 18 on Busch campus that, on a winter Tuesday, holds every kind of New Jersey basketball fan you can name. There's the guy in the 1976 Final Four jacket who still can't talk about the Phil Sellers era without getting misty. There's the Bridgewater dad with three kids and a bag of Wawa hoagies. There's the season-ticket holder who has sat through three straight losing seasons and paid for parking at every one of them. They all walk into the old barn that the sponsors now call Jersey Mike's Arena and that everybody else still calls the RAC. Nine days from now they walk in for the Villanova exhibition [1]. For the first time in a decade, the man they came to watch fight won't be standing in front of the Rutgers bench. On Sept. 9, Steve Pikiell told the world he has cancer [20]. He had surgery, and chemotherapy over the next six months comes next [21]. Brandin Knight, his longtime associate head coach, will run the team while Pikiell is treated [20]. Athletic director Keli Zinn said there is "no set timeline" for his full return [21]. "Just as I ask my team to fight and embrace challenges head-on," Pikiell wrote, "I'm going to attack cancer the same way" [20]. That changes this column. The preview I had planned to write was a referendum. Rutgers has gone four years without an NCAA Tournament and has three straight losing seasons [9]. Last year's team went 14-20 and 6-14 in the Big Ten and finished 125th on KenPom [24]. The Knights are 44-54 over the last three years [20]. Pikiell is 161-160 for his career in Piscataway [23], and his drought-busting tournament trips in 2021 and 2022 feel like a long time ago [20]. All of that is still true. The Big Ten doesn't hand out sympathy wins, and the computers don't grade on heartbreak. The question underneath the season has moved, though. It used to be whether Pikiell's program could still win. Now it's whether the program he built can win without him in the chair. Those questions overlap, but they are not the same. Here's what I think happens. The Roster: Older, Better Shooting, and Finally Built to Score Start with last season's autopsy, because it was ugly. Rutgers finished last in the Big Ten in KenPom adjusted offensive efficiency and third from the bottom on defense [10]. It was also the second straight year outside the national top 100 in adjusted defense [18]. Watching that team in the half court was like driving Route 18 on a Friday afternoon on a doughnut spare: slow, stressful, and always one pothole from coming apart. The rebuild was real money and real effort. Zinn spent her first year building up the NIL operation, and Rob Sullivan was hired as a general manager whose only job is men's basketball [8]. What they assembled is a 16-man roster: six returners, five Division I transfers, three international signees, a freshman guard and a walk-on [6], [7]. Rutgers brings back 53.9 percent of its minutes, which ranks fifth in the Big Ten [10]. The national media still isn't buying it. Jon Rothstein put Rutgers 16th in the 18-team league [14]. Busting Brackets put the Knights 17th and pointed straight at the defense [18]. I think both are a couple of spots too low. My starting five: Lino Mark at the point, Tariq Francis at the 2, Darin Smith Jr. on the wing, Darren Buchanan Jr. at the 4, and Christian Gurdak in the middle. At least one prominent projection starts Will Sydnor at the 3 and brings Smith off the bench as a sixth-man scorer [30]. I understand why: Sydnor makes the lineup bigger. But this was the worst offense in the league [10], and it can't open every game with a lineup that lets defenses pack the paint. Smith starts and Smith closes. The backcourt and wings Tariq Francis (6-1, Sr.) is the guy. The NJIT transfer scored 578 points last season at 17.0 per game, the most by a Scarlet Knight since Quincy Douby's program-record 839 in 2005-06 [7]. He made 164 free throws at 91.1 percent, and he had three 30-point games, including a 34-point night capped by a buzzer-beater against Penn [7]. He also has a long-standing relationship with Knight [8], which matters more this winter than it would have in any other. Moving him off the ball next to Mark lets him catch it already going downhill instead of dribbling into a wall of help. With two minutes left in a one-possession game, the ball is his. Lino Mark (6-2, So.) averaged 5.9 points as a freshman. Over the final eight games he averaged 12.2, and he closed the year with 17 points and five assists against UCLA in the Big Ten Tournament [7]. His speed in transition gives this team something it hasn't had. If he makes enough catch-and-shoot threes to keep defenders honest, nobody gets to trap Francis off ball screens. Darin Smith Jr. (6-7, Jr.) is the prize of the portal class. He was the Northeast Conference Player of the Year at Central Connecticut State, averaging 20.7 points and 5.4 rebounds while shooting 45.6 percent from the field, 37.6 percent from three and 89.8 percent from the line [7]. Rutgers fans have already seen what he can do: he scored a game-high 21 at the RAC last Nov. 21 as CCSU beat the Knights 67-54 [7]. "The red jersey is going to look good on me," he said when he signed [7]. Everyone knows the jump from the NEC to the Big Ten is steep. What matters is how much of that production survives it. Darren Buchanan Jr. (6-7, 240, fifth year) is the muscle. He averaged 8.1 points and 3.9 rebounds last season and scored his 1,000th career point at Penn State [7]. He guards wings, he guards bruising Big Ten forwards, and he never asks for the ball. Jamichael Davis (6-2, Sr.) is a rarity in this era: a four-year player at one school and a second-year captain [7]. He played a career-high 26.2 minutes a game last year, shot a career-best 35.8 percent from three, and closed with 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting against Creighton [7]. "Loyalty means everything to me," he said [7]. He's the first guard off the bench, and he'll close the nights when Rutgers needs a stop more than a basket. The rest of the perimeter: RaSheed Jones (6-6) started all 32 games at Coastal Carolina and averaged 14.8 points with 36.7 percent shooting from three and 80.7 percent from the line [7]. Kaden Powers (6-4, So.) once scored all 18 of his points against UCLA in a single half [7]. Imahri Wooten (6-5, Fr.), out of Redemption Christian Academy, is a bucket-getter who scored 42 in an EYBL game the week he signed [7]. Diego Garavaglia (6-7, Fr.) played 33 games for Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany's top league and led Italy to bronze at the U18 European Championship [7]. "Let's bring Little Italy to New Jersey!" he said [7]. I'm not going to argue. The frontcourt Christian Gurdak (6-10, So.) needs some perspective first. At Virginia Tech he averaged 5.6 points and 4.4 rebounds in 17.2 minutes as a freshman. He did it efficiently, at 63.2 percent shooting, and he put up 17 points and 19 rebounds in a triple-overtime game against Virginia [7]. That's a promising reserve's line, not a finished Big ten starter's. NJ.com is right that his offensive skill set is something Rutgers hasn't had at center since Myles Johnson. It is also right that he doesn't project as a rim protector [9]. Doubling his minutes is how he becomes the post presence Rutgers has lacked. It's also how he gets his education in foul trouble. Dorin Buca (7-2, 286, Sr.) is the sledgehammer. The Kansas State transfer averaged 3.2 points and 1.3 blocks and still led the Wildcats with 35 blocks [7]. His block rate was 10.6 percent [9]. In 15 minutes a night, he scares people. Stretched to 25 minutes in a switch-everything league, he becomes a target. Depth: Will Sydnor (6-8) is a Bronx kid who went to The Patrick School in New Jersey and was MAAC Rookie of the Year at Manhattan, averaging 13.9 points and 6.8 rebounds [7]. Martin Tonejc (6-7, Fr.) won a Slovenian title with Cedevita Olimpija [7]. Mervedi Miteo (6-10, 265, Fr.) comes from Gran Canaria [5]. At 17 he was the youngest player at FIBA AfroBasket and averaged 6.3 points and 3.8 rebounds against grown men [7]. He's the long-term project. Gevonte Ware (6-9) rounds out the center group [5]. The Schedule The regular season is 32 games: 12 non-conference games, including three at the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas and Syracuse at Barclays Center, plus 20 Big Ten games [24], [25]. The tune-ups come first. Villanova visits Oct. 11, and then Rutgers plays St. John's at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 18 [1]. Every Jersey kid on this roster who ever dreamed of playing on the Garden floor gets a chance to do it. How to read the table Preseason Torvik ratings come from The Knight Report's tracker [11]. There is no preseason NET, so I haven't pretended there is one. Projected Quad follows NET quadrant logic by location. That's why Maryland is Quad 1 in College Park and Quad 2 in Piscataway. Win % is my own model: preseason ratings plus home-court value. What Vegas thinks Not much yet. I couldn't find a posted Rutgers season win total or a Big Ten basketball title price I could verify. Books rarely hang numbers on a team picked 16th before November, and I'm not going to invent one. The percentages below are mine, not market odds. The closest thing to a consensus is the power rankings. Rothstein and Busting Brackets both have Illinois at the top, with Michigan State and Michigan right behind [14], [18]. Game-by-game projections Date Opponent Site Preseason Torvik Proj. Quad Win % Pick Nov. 6 New Haven Home 351 Q4 96% W Nov. 10 NJIT Home 316 Q4 93% W Nov. 13 Bryant Home 346 Q4 91% W Nov. 17 vs. Houston Las Vegas 5 Q1 19% L, 71–60 Nov. 18 vs. Notre Dame (or Florida) Las Vegas 84 (4) Q2 (Q1) 60% (20%) W, 70–66 (vs. ND) Nov. 19 vs. Auburn, Kansas, UNLV or West Virginia Las Vegas TBD Q1/Q2 ~44% L Nov. 24 Sacred Heart Home 315 Q4 92% W Dec. 1 at Indiana Away 28 Q1 28% L Dec. 9 Michigan Home 13 Q1 41% W, 68–64 (upset) Dec. 12 Seton Hall Home 56 Q2 58% W, 66–61 Dec. 16 Saint Peter's Home 291 Q4 88% W Dec. 20 Army Home 342 Q4 92% W Dec. 29 Delaware State Home 349 Q4 94% W Jan. 2 at Purdue Away 22 Q1 22% L Jan. 5 UCLA Home 25 Q1 47% L, 69–67 Jan. 8 USC Home 30 Q1 51% W, 74–72 Jan. 12 Iowa Home 47 Q2 56% W Jan. 16 at Northwestern Away 76 Q2 46% L Jan. 19 at Maryland Away 36 Q1 33% L Jan. 23 Minnesota Home 82 Q3 64% W Jan. 27 at Oregon Away 32 Q1 29% L Jan. 30 at Washington Away 66 Q1 42% L Feb. 3 Purdue Home 22 Q1 45% L Feb. 6/7 vs. Syracuse Barclays Center 57 Q2 50% W, 72–70 Feb. 10 at Michigan State Away 9 Q1 21% L Feb. 13 Wisconsin Home 50 Q2 54% W Feb. 16 at Nebraska Away 15 Q1 26% L Feb. 20 Penn State Home 105 Q3 68% W Feb. 25 at Ohio State Away 17 Q1 27% L Feb. 28 Maryland Home 36 Q2 55% W Mar. 3 Illinois Home 7 Q1 35% L Mar. 7 at Penn State Away 105 Q2 52% W The Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 matchups come from the official schedule and 247Sports [1], [12]. The Syracuse date hasn't been finalized [25]. The season breaks into five stretches, each with its own projected record: Why the picks land where they do Vegas will test the guards first. Kelvin Sampson's Houston defense goes after ball handlers, so the opener is about Mark and Francis, not the big men. Keep the turnovers in the low teens and it's a respectable loss. Day 2 depends on the bracket. Against Notre Dame, Rutgers is a 60 percent favorite in my model. Against Florida, it's about one in five. Blending those into one number would describe neither game, so I'm projecting the Notre Dame path and a win. The third opponent comes from a pool of Auburn, Kansas, UNLV and West Virginia [12]. The 44 percent is my placeholder for that field, and I'm calling it a loss. The one upset is Michigan on Dec. 9. It's the Big Ten home opener, followed three days later by Seton Hall, which makes for a decibel-meter week [25]. The defending national champion lost its title core to the NBA and lost Dusty May to the Dallas Mavericks. Interim coach Mike Boynton inherits elite talent along with enormous pressure [18]. A rebuilt champion in December, in that building, against a team playing for its sick coach, is the kind of night when students rush the floor. At 41 percent, it's a genuine upset pick. Why lose to UCLA at 47 percent and beat USC at 51 percent? I'm not sprinkling upsets around to make the record look reasonable. UCLA's perimeter size is exactly what bothers a 6-1 and 6-2 backcourt, which NJ.com flagged as the roster's biggest structural problem [9]. USC, meanwhile, arrives at the back end of an East Coast swing [25] and wants to run, and running opens the floor for Mark. Both are close to coin flips, so I'm siding with the matchups. The only Big Ten road win is the finale at Penn State. It's the one conference road game where my model makes Rutgers the favorite, and the Nittany Lions are picked last almost everywhere [14], [18]. At Northwestern (46 percent) and at Washington (42 percent) are close. But a cross-country trip to Eugene and Seattle in late January [1], for a team that was the worst offense in the league a year ago [10], gives me no reason to pick against the numbers. The finish is a grind. Rutgers closes with eight Big Ten games in 25 days [1]. Five of them are at home, and the Knights need four of those five. I have them getting exactly four: Wisconsin, Penn State, Maryland and the road finale at Penn State, against home losses to Purdue and Illinois. The Pick Regular season: 18–14 overall, 10–2 non-conference, 8–12 Big Ten. After the Big Ten Tournament: 19–15. Here's the check on my own math. My conference win probabilities add up to about 8.4 expected wins, so 8–12 is the model talking, not hope. The non-conference probabilities add up to about 8.8 wins on the Notre Dame path and about 8.4 if it's Florida. That makes 10–2 the optimistic end of the range: it requires winning the close ones against Seton Hall and Syracuse. My reason for taking that bet is the free-throw line. Rutgers has three players who made at least 80 percent on more than 100 attempts last season: Francis, Smith and Jones [9]. That's from a program that just posted its best free-throw percentage since 1972-73 [9]. For what it's worth, the 247Sports/ChatGPT exercise landed on the same 18–14 and 8–12 [30]. The difference is that I can show you which 18. Big Ten Tournament: An 8–12 record in an 18-team league projects to about the 11th seed. That means a first-round win over a lower seed, then a loss to a rested top-half team. Projected NET: 61. Verdict: Out of the NCAA Tournament, but barely, and that matters this year. The expanded 76-team field has 44 at-large bids instead of 36, and the 24 lowest seeds play a new March Madness Opening Round [26]. A NET in the low 60s with a home win over Michigan and two Quad 2 neutral-site wins gets Rutgers into the conversation. Fifteen losses probably keeps it out. Here's the new wrinkle. The NIT has been cut to 24 teams, and the committee's "First Four Out" now get automatic No. 1 seeds and home games [27]. If Rutgers is one of the last four teams left out, March basketball comes back to the RAC. That's a long way from last year's floor. Last season ended with a Big Ten invite to the College Basketball Crown and a loss to Creighton [3], [28]. Ceiling, floor and the Knight variable Scenario Record Big Ten Postseason What has to happen Ceiling 21–11 10–10 NCAA (Opening Round or 10/11 seed) Smith's shooting holds up against Big Ten closeouts. Gurdak handles 25-plus minutes. Defense reaches the top 40 nationally. Two coin flips go their way. Projection 19–15 8–12 First teams out; possible NIT No. 1 seed The table above, with one upset and the home court holding. Floor 15–17 6–14 None Bigger guards overpower the backcourt [9]. Defense stays outside the top 100 for a third straight year [18]. The emotional lift fades by February. The Knight variable. If chemotherapy runs about six months from September [21], the realistic assumption is that Knight coaches most or all of the regular season. I didn't take away any wins for that. Knight is in his 11th season on this staff and his sixth as associate head coach [24]. He was introduced at Rutgers in April 2016 after eight seasons at Pittsburgh [22]. He's also a Jersey guy: he grew up in East Orange and played at Seton Hall Prep before becoming Big East co-Player of the Year at Pitt [22]. The defensive principles, the recruiting relationships and the culture are as much his as anyone's. The real unknown is the last 90 seconds of a tie game in February: the timeouts, the late-game sets, the call on who takes the final shot. We haven't seen him do that part. I'd put the effect at plus or minus one win. Which way it goes is the most interesting question of the season. The Players: Projections and Accolades Player PPG RPG Other My Take Tariq Francis 16.0 3.0 3.5 APG, ~89% FT All-Big Ten third team Darin Smith Jr. 12.5 5.0 ~36% 3PT The second option this offense never had Lino Mark 10.0 3.0 4.0 APG Breakout pick Christian Gurdak 8.0 6.5 ~58% FG Volume up, efficiency down a tick Darren Buchanan Jr. 6.5 4.5 Top defensive assignment Quiet but essential RaSheed Jones 5.5 3.0 Second-unit scorer Sixth-man sparkplug Jamichael Davis 4.5 2.5 ~35% 3PT Closer on defense-first nights Imahri Wooten 4.5 1.5 Instant offense Freshman of impact Will Sydnor 4.0 3.5 Rebounding minutes Matchup starter vs. big lineups Dorin Buca 3.5 4.0 1.5 BPG Most likely to disappoint All-Big Ten: Francis makes the third team. He'll score slightly less than last year because he finally has help, but he'll win more, and voters notice that. Big Ten Player of the Year belongs to Michigan State's Jeremy Fears Jr. until somebody takes it from him [18]. Breakout: Mark. The 12.2 points a game over the final eight games [7] wasn't a fluke. It was a kid figuring things out. With the ball in his hands from the opening tip, double figures is the floor. Sixth man: Jones. A 6-6 fifth-year guard who logged 36.3 minutes a night at Coastal [7] won't be rattled coming off the bench. His size also covers the backcourt's biggest weakness. Freshman of impact: Wooten over Tonejc and Garavaglia. Big Ten winters wear down polished European shooters in year one. A scorer who can put up eight points in four minutes always finds playing time. Defensive anchors: Buchanan on the wing and Davis at the point of attack. If Rutgers gets back to being miserable to play against, those two are the reason. Most likely to disappoint: Buca, mostly because people will expect too much. A 7-2 shot-blocker is a terrific 15-minute weapon. The league's spread pick-and-roll teams will try to drag him to the perimeter and run him off the floor. Judge him on blocks and you'll be happy. Expect a starting center and you won't be. Five Things I Believe 1. This team will play hard for its coach, and that matters, up to a point. It sounds like a cliché until you've seen it in that building. Loose balls, charges and the extra rotation are what Pikiell built his program on, and they're the things players control when the shots aren't falling. Emotion won't make a jump shot go down in February. It might get one more stop in December, and one stop is the Michigan game. 2. Smith is the cure for the scoring droughts. Every Rutgers fan knows the pattern: an 8–0 lead becomes an 18–2 hole because the offense goes six minutes without a field goal. If Smith's 37.6 percent from three [7] survives Big Ten closeouts, defenses can't sag all five guys into the lane to stop Francis anymore. That's the most important tactical change on the roster. 3. The defense needs to be top 40, not top 25. When Rutgers was good, a trip to the RAC was a dental appointment without novocaine. Two straight years outside the top 100 in adjusted defense took that away [18]. Getting back to 2021 is fantasy. Getting into the top 40 is realistic, and it's the line between my ceiling and my floor. 4. The free-throw line wins this team three games. Fans who remember bricks off the back iron won't believe it, but this roster has three high-volume shooters who made at least 80 percent from the line last year [9]. In a league full of one-possession games, that's how Rutgers wins at Barclays and holds off Seton Hall. 5. The real test is the program's character, not the coach's seat. For two years the conversation has been about money. Michigan won a national title with a reported eight-figure roster [8], and Rutgers spent this offseason trying to close that gap [8], [9]. That's all still real. But the story this winter is whether what Pikiell built, meaning the defense, the development and the toughness, can carry the team when he isn't there every day to drive it. A 19-win season under these circumstances would be one of the best things his program has ever done. The first one that counts is Nov. 6 against New Haven [1], a 96 percent win in my model and an easy night on paper. It won't feel easy. Knight will walk out to the head coach's chair. The building will be loud for reasons that have nothing to do with the opponent. And somewhere, a coach who spent ten years asking his players to fight will be watching them do it for him. That's the season. Bring tissues and a scorebook. You'll need both. 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