Rutgers unveils up-tempo pace in exhibition

For the Rutgers men’s basketball team, the wait is nearly over. Junior forward Dane Miller said the offseason and preseason seemed like “a long time.”

Even head coach Mike Rice felt the effects.

“Whether it’s two weeks, three weeks into the season, it feels like it’s two months,” the second-year head coach said.

Such is life in a Division-I program, where the stakes and expectations are usually daunting.

This was not the case last year, when Rice inherited only eight returning scholarship players.

But the Scarlet Knights unveil their new look to the public for the first time Sunday, when they host Rutgers-Newark at the Louis Brown Athletic Center for their final tune-up.

“It’s going to be great with the excitement of the younger guys coming in. I know there’s going to be a huge crowd,” said junior forward Austin Johnson. “I’m just ready to play somebody else for once instead of beating up on my teammates every day.”

The Knights follow up their scrimmage last weekend against Iona with an exhibition against the Scarlet Raiders, Rutgers’ final opponent before beginning the season Nov. 11 against Dartmouth.

With seven freshmen on the roster, the focus is on the finer print, Johnson said.

“We don’t always listen to the small things and implement the small details,” he said. “Those are the things that help us win games. One minor-detail miss can lose us the game.”

With one of the nation’s most heralded recruiting classes, the microscope at the RAC will be larger than any in recent memory.

Rutgers’ highly touted backcourt, consisting of freshmen Eli Carter, Myles Mack and Jerome Seagears, makes its first appearance in scarlet.

Mack committed to Rice and the Knights before his senior year of high school, while Carter went to prep school and offered an April 22 commitment.

Regardless, the wait was long enough, Miller said.

“It’s an opportunity to play against another team and to see where we are as a team,” he said. “It’s important because it’s going to give us a chance to see how the RAC is with a lot of people in it. Now, it’s not practice.”

When Rice opened last season with an audience in an exhibition against McGill, he did so with a guarded philosophy.

The defensive-minded coach preached full-court defense during his tenure at Robert Morris, but lacked the bodies to imitate his style in Year 1 in Piscataway.

So he abandoned the full-court press more often than not and scrapped his more up-tempo tendencies.

Now with a loaded deck and roster full of athletes, the numbers game is no longer an issue.

But youth now poses a concern, albeit less of one than Rice suffered through last season.

“I’d like an attacking, energetic, urgent, passionate type of play by Rutgers, but if you play with that pace, sometimes our freshmen tend to not play with a purpose,” Rice said. “Until we have an understanding … sometimes it’s going to be slowed down.”

When the Knights take the floor against an opponent for the first time Sunday, fans will see Rice’s vision for program with less restriction than his first season.

The look remains a mystery even to his players.

“I’ve never seen a collective group of guys with this much talent come in, especially at Rutgers,” Johnson said. “It’s something Rutgers has never seen before. The ceiling is so high.”