While watching the Syracuse- Connecticut game yesterday, it's easy to reminisce why Rutgers did not make the Big East Tournament.
The Scarlet Knights had to adjust to there not being a Quincy Douby to base their offense around, and the players who had to step up were still relatively inexperienced.
But the first person to tell you that Fred Hill Jr. is pushing all the right buttons is one of the head coaches in that first-round game yesterday, UConn's Jim Calhoun.
"I think Freddie's doing all the right things - changing defenses, etc," Calhoun said after a win over Rutgers earlier in the year. "They have good players, they just need a couple more of them. Secondly, they just need the experience of his system."
While it's hard to see many positives in a year the Knights were 10-19 and 3-13 in the Big East, one of the only things fans should have been looking for this season was improvement throughout the year.
In an edition of "Game On" before the basketball season started, I said the things RU fans should judge Hill on this season is the teams' work ethic and his recruiting this year.
Well after starting the season at 1-5 and seeming like it might be a dreadful Craig Littlepage type Rutgers year, the Knights did respond to Hill's system.
Rutgers were competitive through the majority of the games and is there anything more to ask for - keep in mind they lost 25.4 points-per-game with the loss of Douby.
"All you can ask is that they compete and get better," Hill said after the Knights' last game of the season. "I'm really pleased, obviously you'd like to win more. There's no question, that's the name of the game."
Sure there was a few embarrassing games - the whole Chicago Invitational was rather hard to watch from press row.
But this isn't an alibi for this seasons record; this is really just the fact of building a basketball program. Coaches need time.
As regards to recruiting, Hill is bringing in four guards next season which will definitely help the Knights offensively.
Corey Chandler is ranked as the 58th best player in the 2007 class by rivalshoops.com. Mike Coburn is a winning point guard on a Mount Vernon team - which is one of the top teams in the tri-state area. Justin Sofman will definitely help RU's poor shooting percentage, and Earl "The Pearl" Pettis is described by many as an 'old school player'. Granted there aren't any post players in the class thus far, but Hill is bringing in talent.
These are the players that Hill will try to fuse next season with the faces of this year.
"The future is JR Inman and Courtney Nelson and Anthony Farmer and Jaron Griffin and Hamady N'diaye," he said. "I saw growth and development from all those guys in different areas. We're going to really need someone to step up and be a leader.
"We need the sophomores and juniors to step up and teach the freshmen as they come in."
Hill also feels there's things to work on, but he has a list of family coaches to lean on in the offseason in Fred Hill Sr. (Rutgers baseball head coach) and Brian Hill (head coach of the Orlando Magic.
"Two guys named Hill - it's a law firm, it's Hill, Hill & Hill," he joked.
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