Rutgers basketball capping action-packed offseason with foreign tour
As Rutgers basketball players and staff underwent a series of vaccinations over the past few weeks in preparation for the program’s first-ever trip to Africa, head coach Steve Pikiell viewed the shots as part of the bonding experience.
“It’s hard to go to Africa, so nobody goes,” Pikiell said by phone last week. “That’s part of why I wanted to go there.”
The Scarlet Knights, whose traveling party of about 45 people includes some alums and donors, have quite the journey ahead – three days each in Senegal capital Dakar and the Portuguese cities of Algarve and Lisbon. They will play four games against club-level teams, conduct two charity hoops clinics for kids and participate in some memorable cultural experiences, including a sightseeing safari and a tour of what was once the world’s busiest slave-trading outpost.
They depart New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport 9 p.m. Tuesday and fly direct to Dakar, arriving Wednesday morning and engaging in a workout on a “muscle beach” on the West African coast. Then comes a visit to the Island of Goree, a United Nations world heritage site and the epicenter of human trafficking for 400 years (shacks where slaves were held are still standing).
“I’ve heard it’s a very moving place to see,” Pikiell said.
On Thursday Rutgers’ players will visit a village and help run a clinic for local kids.
“You know sometimes guys complain when they get their 11th pair of sneakers,” Pikiell said. “Well, this is a village where people don’t have shoes. They don’t have running water.”
Rutgers will play two games in Dakar at the end of the week. This is the first time all 13 scholarship players will be together, with a couple of in-transfers arriving just last week.
“It’s not win at all costs,” Pikiell said. “It’s a different environment. I get to figure my guys out. You learn a lot about who’s a leader before the seasons starts.”
There are some tangible advantages to visiting Dakar. It’s home to NBA Academy Africa – a training center for top prospects from throughout the continent and a potential recruiting hub. Rutgers features three players who hail from Africa – Mawot Mag was born in Sudan and Cliff Omoruyi and Emmanuel Ogbole grew up in Nigeria. For them, the trip presents a limited window to execute name/image/likeness endorsement deals.
All foreign trips for college basketball teams come with a special allowance – 10 full-scale summer practices ahead of departure – so Pikiell already has a pretty good feel for his squad.
“We’ve had some stubborn veterans in the past; this group is very coachable, like a breath of fresh air,” he said. “We’re more athletic, and I think we’ve improved our shooting a lot.”
He cited sophomore forward Antwone Woolfolk as a vastly improved returnee.
“Wolf has gotten faster, he’s shooting better and he’s just focusing on basketball now (he was a football standout in high school), so that’s been really good for him,” Pikiell said.
Mag and Ogbole, both of whom are coming off torn ACLs, will make the trip but won’t play, though Pikiell said Mag's rehab is so far ahead of schedule that “he will probably do layup lines on tour.” Newly arrived transfers Jeremiah Williams and Austin Williams are traveling, too, but they are coming off season-long injuries that will be evaluated by Rutgers’ medical staff, which is traveling as well.
In Portugal Aug. 13-19 the Scarlet Knights will conduct another clinic for kids, hit the beach, take a catamaran tour and play two more games against club-level competition. After returning to the states, the players will take two weeks off before the fall semester begins Sept. 5.
Welcome antidote
This stretch should be a welcome antidote to what has been an offseason of nonstop news for the program, which welcomed a new assistant coach and six new players, lost four out-transfers, had one player transfer out and then back (wing Oskar Palmquist) and hung onto Omoruyi after the star center’s serious exploration of turning pro.
To help streamline offseason turnover, Pikiell supports a movement to narrow the undergraduate transfer window from 60 to 30 days in the spring.
“If there’s 60 days of the transfer portal, kids are waking up for 60 straight days thinking about transferring,” he said. “That’s the only thing they see on their phones. That’s hard for them – for 60 days, somebody is telling them (to transfer). I am in agreement to make it 30 days. I think that would help everybody a little bit.”
Rutgers also just locked in two notable non-conference games in Princeton (in Trenton Nov. 6) and Mississippi State (in Newark Dec. 23), marking the first time the Scarlet Knights will play two neutral-court contests in the Garden State. Event groups brokered the matchups.
“I don’t mind moving around a little bit,” Pikiell said. “I want to be New Jersey’s team. I still like playing at Jersey Mike’s (Arena in Piscataway), and we’re selling out every game there.”
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Rutgers basketball foreign tour to Senegal, Portugal complete schedule
