2025-26 Big Ten basketball season preview: Rutgers Scarlet Knights

With the start of college basketball season in early November, Inside the Hall is taking a team-by-team look at the Big Ten and a player-by-player look at IU basketball’s roster over the next two months.

Today, our team previews continue with Rutgers.

Previously: Penn State

With three straight NCAA tournament misses, the heat may be increasing on Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell as he enters his 10th season in Piscataway.

Despite having a pair of NBA draft lottery picks in Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper on the roster, the Scarlet Knights didn’t sniff the NCAA tournament last season.

Bailey and Harper are gone – along with contributors Jeremiah Williams, Jordan Derkack and Lathan Sommerville – and expectations are for another postseason miss for Pikiell.

With little in returning production, Pikiell will need to do his best coaching job yet to avoid missing the Big Ten tournament in Chicago next March.

The backcourt will feature junior guard Jamichael Davis, who is back for his third season with the program, and NJIT transfer Tariq Francis.

The 6-foot-2 Davis averaged 4.6 points, 1.7 assists and 1.5 rebounds in 18 minutes per game last season while shooting 33.3 percent on 3s.

Francis could be the team’s leading scorer after a solid sophomore campaign at NJIT, where he averaged 19.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists in 34.7 minutes. The 6-foot-1 guard attempted nearly eight 3-pointers per game but connected at just a 32.4-percent clip.

On the wing, former IU commit Harun Zrno could be asked to play significant minutes from day one. After the Hoosiers parted ways with Zrno following the coaching change from Mike Woodson to Darian DeVries, Zrno chose Rutgers. The Bosnian is already 21 years old and averaged 17.5 points last season for KK Slavija, a professional team.

High-energy forward Dylan Grant is back after an encouraging freshman season that saw his minutes increase as the season went along. The 6-foot-7 Grant shot 58.2 percent on 2s last season and averaged 5.9 points and 3.4 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game.

George Washington transfer Darren Buchanan Jr. should also favor heavily in the rotation. A native of Washington, D.C., the 6-foot-7 Buchanan Jr. had one of the top 30 free-throw rates in the country last season. He attempted 157 free throws (66.2 percent) and shot 50.8 percent on 2s while averaging 10.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 28.4 minutes per game.

Up front, Emmanuel Ogbole is back at the five and the Scarlet Knights also return 6-foot-9 sophomore Bryce Dortch.

The 6-foot-10 Ogbole has struggled to stay healthy and averaged just 3.1 points and 3.7 rebounds in 13.3 minutes per game last season. Dortch played sparingly last season after Ogbole’s knee injury.

The rest of the Rutgers roster is talented on paper, but largely unproven.

2023 McDonald’s All-American Baye Fall arrives after two unproductive seasons at Arkansas and Kansas State. The 6-foot-11 Fall has played in just 13 games over two college seasons with career averages of 1.3 points and 1.4 rebounds per game.

The Scarlet Knights also have freshmen frontcourt pieces in Chris Nwuli, Denis Badalau and Gevonte Ware, along with backcourt newcomers Dorian Jones, Lino Mark and Kaden Powers.

The 6-foot-4 Jones, a former Ohio State recruit, was ranked the No. 88 player in the 2025 class by 247Sports and could challenge for guard minutes.

Nwuli, a 6-foot-7 forward, was a top 150 recruit according to 247Sports, as was Lino Mark, a 6-foot-2 point guard. According to Pikiell, Mark is “faster than Corey Sanders,” a former Rutgers standout guard.

Badalau, a 6-foot-8 forward from Romania, has played professionally in Italy and averaged just under 16 points for the Romanian national team during the 2024-25 FIBA World Cup season.

Given that Rutgers returns little in terms of proven production and will primarily be relying on younger players and up transfers, it won’t be surprising to see various starting lineups and rotations early in the season as Pikiell attempts to figure out his personnel.

After last season’s significant step backward defensively, the Scarlet Knights have to get back to respectability there to be competitive in a talented Big Ten. Last season, Rutgers had the 15th-best defense in the conference in league games and finished 116th in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com. That was the worst finish in adjusted defensive efficiency for Rutgers since the final season of the Eddie Jordan era.

Bottom line: Pikiell brought the Rutgers program from a Big Ten doormat to respectability, but the past three seasons have been underwhelming. A fourth straight NCAA tournament miss could call his job into question. With a ton of new pieces to integrate, look for Pikiell to get back to a focus on defense and trying to win ugly, as his best teams at Rutgers have. Jersey Mike’s Arena provides a very good home court environment, but a new-look roster will need to give the home crowd a reason to cheer to keep the fanbase engaged this winter after last season’s disaster.

Quotable: “We’re getting back to what made us really good — over-evaluating, developing guys, making guys better. We have the athleticism and size to be excellent defensively and get back to rebounding. I haven’t seen anybody else, so I don’t know what other teams have, but if we can stay healthy, we will one thousand percent surprise a lot of people.” – Pikiell to Seth Davis of HoopsHQ.com.

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