'Making Rutgers cool': How two top-5 picks are trying to change the school's rep -- and legacy

PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- On display in Steve Pikiell's office on the fourth floor of Rutgers' Athletic Performance Center are three basketball-sized glass display cases.

The bottom one, on the wall behind where the Rutgers men's basketball coach sits, is labeled "NCAA Tournament." There's a ball inside commemorating Rutgers' win over Clemson in the 2021 tournament, the program's first NCAA tournament appearance since 1991 and their first win since 1983.

The other two cases are empty. One is marked "Final Four"; the other, "National Championship."

Pikiell had them built when he took over the program in 2016, when the Scarlet Knights hadn't had a winning season in more than a decade and hadn't finished above .500 in conference play in 25 years. Since then, Pikiell has guided Rutgers to a pair of NCAA tournament appearances and its first top-25 ranking in more than 40 years. But as those unoccupied cases indicate, he has loftier goals still unfulfilled.

"We're getting dusty," Pikiell told ESPN in late November. "We need to fill a couple more."

Which brings us to this season. The Scarlet Knights earned a preseason top-25 ranking for just the second time since 1979, thanks to the addition of Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper, two of the top three recruits in the 2024 high school class and projected top-five picks in next summer's NBA draft.

It's unusual for the central New Jersey school to have one player as decorated as Bailey or Harper, let alone two. Now the trick will be living up to that potential. Rutgers won its first four games against mid-major opponents but fell out of the AP Top 25 with a loss to Kennesaw State. Now, it faces the toughest stretch of its schedule: the Players Era Festival -- including games against Notre Dame and Alabama -- and a trip to Ohio State in just the next 12 days. It will go a long way toward determining whether the team Pikiell has built around his two stars has a chance to fill those glass cases.

"Dylan and Ace can do things that normal people don't do," he said. "Then we have guys around them that can do some things. So if we can put it all together, we're pretty exciting, I think."

THE FIRST TIME Bailey and Harper teamed up was April 2023, on an Athletes of Tomorrow grassroots team at the Tip-Off Classic in Atlanta.

Bailey had spent three years playing on the spring and summer AOT team and had just committed to Rutgers three months before, becoming the highest-ranked recruit in program history.

Harper, meanwhile, hadn't committed to a school yet, though Rutgers was high on his list of potential destinations: His older brother, Ron Harper Jr., was a two-time All-Big Ten selection and one of the winningest players in the past 40 years of Rutgers basketball. Bailey and Harper had teamed up a little in USA Basketball, but Bailey saw an opportunity to show Harper what it would mean for them to pair up at AOT. He told program director Damon Wilson, who had known people in Harper's circle for years, that he wanted to invite Harper to fly down for a weekend.

And the two elite recruits immediately clicked.

"That s--- was fun," Bailey said. "The whole gym was just eyes on us, too. Knowing the whole gym was coming in to watch us, just to put on a show, doing what we do best, and then we're playing together. It's just fun."

"He told me from day one, he said the ball is in your hands. Like, I'm going to rely on you," Harper added. "So that really hit me because, the trust he has in me, I know that I got just as much in him."

While a groin issue hampered Harper later in the weekend, onlookers saw more than enough from the two stars to indicate the potential for a high-level duo in the future.

"We all saw it was natural," Wilson said. "There was no selfishness, there was no, 'I want to try to outdo you, I'm going to show you.' They were passing the ball to one another. They were pushing each other. Encouraging each other, it was like they were playing together forever. The chemistry was there. They had the makings of a special duo."

Wilson added that the off-court friendship between Bailey and Harper also developed during that weekend in Atlanta.

"It was more so the bonding that took place outside of the games," he said. "Hanging out, going to dinner, listening to music, talking. Spending a whole weekend together, that's where they grew. I feel like at that point, that's when Dylan trusted Ace. And with the bond these two had, they ended up trusting each other."

From that point on, Bailey played a key role in recruiting Harper to Rutgers. Bailey wasn't calling Harper everyday with a sales pitch, but the two players continued to build a relationship.

"I talked to Dylan, but we didn't talk about basketball all the time," Bailey said. "Checking on his mental, checking on his family. ... I know everybody else is in his ear about where you going, what you doing and all that. So I wasn't trying to be one of those pests."

For Harper, the biggest eye-opener was even more straightforward: a top-five recruit from nowhere near New Jersey committing to Rutgers. For context, before Bailey and Harper committed, Rutgers had signed just six total top-100 prospects since ESPN's recruiting database began in 2007 - with just one player ranked inside the top 50, in-state guard Mike Rosario in 2008.

"We have a bunch of great players here, but when Ace committed, it was like, dang, he's coming here," Harper said. "He's from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he believes in the program. Why shouldn't I -- a kid that's been around the program for about all my life, my brother was here and just I know all the ins and outs, I know all the great people that are here. ... So why not come here and do what he did?"

EVERYONE AROUND THE Rutgers program talks about Bailey's infectious energy, and it's on full display as he bounces into practice the day before Rutgers is set to host Merrimack, shaking hands with everyone on the coaching staff and singing Kurtis Blow's 1984 classic, "Basketball."

"... I like the pick-and-roll, I like the give-and-go ..."

While Harper isn't as spirited as Bailey, he's not far behind his classmate as what Pikiell calls an "energy giver." The two freshman stars are aggressive in a 2-on-1 drill. They're engaged while running the Scarlet Knights' zone offense. They finish first and second in a post-drill full-court sprint.

They might be projected to be the second and third picks in ESPN's mock draft, but there's a clear motivation to leave a legacy at Rutgers before they go pro.

"Me and Ace and the rest of the team, we can do something very big that people haven't seen in New Jersey in a long time," Harper said. "We can make this a school [where] people, not just from Jersey but out of Jersey, want to come here and do what we did ... changing the culture and just making Rutgers cool, I guess. Why can't another recruit come and do the same thing we're doing?"

Part of that process was Pikiell putting the pieces around his two stars to make the most of their 10 months with the Scarlet Knights.

Only three players returned from last season -- led by leading scorer Jeremiah Williams and Jamichael Davis, Bailey's high school teammate -- but Pikiell landed four veterans from the transfer portal, including NEC Player of the Year Jordan Derkack from Merrimack.

Having two headliners at the top of the roster can be a gift and curse when it comes to recruiting out of the portal. Some players will understandably be concerned about available shots and minutes. Sometimes there are personality issues or ego clashes with players who had so much hype at the high school level.

But Pikiell used Bailey and Harper at the top of his sales pitch last spring: Come play with two top-five picks. Come practice and play in front of NBA scouts and executives on a daily basis.

For Williams, who is entering his fifth year of college basketball and has been around three different programs, it didn't take long to recognize the talent upgrade in Piscataway.

"For Ace, the first days we started playing, I got some of those 'Oh s---' moments pretty often from him," Williams said. "And that was our first time being around him, first time seeing how he plays, just the plays he was able to create. And for Dylan, when he came back, something that stood out to me was his maturity. He has a good presence about himself. ... I learned a lot from them. They bring energy to me and they keep that youth and help instill it in me."

THROUGH FIVE GAMES of the young season, Rutgers' ceiling is still something of a mystery. There have been positives: Four wins to start the season over mid-major opponents, each by double digits.

"The out-of-bounds plays work better now," Pikiell joked before last week's game against Merrimack.

Harper is averaging 19.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.2 assists. Bailey, after missing the first two games of the season because of an injury, had 17 points in his debut and then went for 23 points and 10 rebounds against Merrimack -- including a shot that only a select few 18-year-olds in the world can make.

"He is different," Merrimack coach Joe Gallo said of Bailey. "There are some shots that he made that you could not do anything about. He is as good of a player as I have ever coached against."

But after leaving the confines of Jersey Mike's Arena -- the RAC, as it will be forever known by hoops diehards -- and its 68 consecutive sold-out home games, Rutgers and its freshman phenoms received a difficult introduction to the unpredictability of college basketball.

The Scarlet Knights went to Kennesaw State, a game scheduled as a homecoming for Bailey, and lost 79-77. They trailed by as many as 21 points in the second half, then just two on the final possession. Bailey brought it up the left side of the floor, but instead of driving to the basket or looking for his own shot, he picked up his dribble and attempted a cross-court pass to a teammate that was intercepted by Kennesaw.

"Ace is a good player, and you got to live through these opportunities and live through some of these experiences," Pikiell said after the loss. "I have a lot of faith in him. ... He is a good player, and so are the rest of the guys on my team, and we will bounce back."

Now, not only do the Scarlet Knights need to rebound from Sunday's loss, they need to do it while also adjusting to a massive step up in competition. The Players Era Festival in Las Vegas begins this week, with Rutgers facing Notre Dame on Tuesday, Alabama on Wednesday and a to-be-determined opponent Saturday. And then there's a road trip to Ohio State to start Big Ten play next weekend.

"You got to get off the mat. This is a big boy league and we're playing Notre Dame and Alabama and whoever else, so we don't have a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves," Pikiell said. "We got to figure it out."

Does the Kennesaw State loss spiral into a longer losing streak and change the narrative surrounding the team? Or do the Scarlet Knights show resolve and that they can compete with the best teams in Vegas?

It's a stretch that some Rutgers players have circled on their calendars, a chance to make a statement on a national stage. If the Scarlet Knights are to come out the other side with the expectations they had this preseason, much of it will come down to their two leading scorers, their two future lottery picks and perhaps their two most engaging personalities, Bailey and Harper.

"We're blessed to have them here for a year," Pikiell said. "And we smile a lot more."