Every week, The Knight Report publisher Richard O’Leary and his team of Rutgers Athletics experts answer questions from Scarlet Knights fans about the any of the athletic programs, their recruiting efforts, or whatever else they might want to know in this thread below. If we don't know the answer, we'll work our hardest to find out the latest and provide the best answer possible.

We will check in on the thread all day long to answer whatever questions you have!

Why don’t we sell those? I saw they gave some out the other night and it looks like we sold them years ago. I would absolutely buy a hoodie if they made one.

1/14

Illinois at Indiana.....ILLINOIS
Ohio State at Wisconsin.....WISCONSIN
Iowa at USC.....IOWA

1/15

Penn State at Michigan State.....MICHIGAN STATE
Purdue at Washington.....PURDUE

1/16

Michigan at Minnesota.....MICHIGAN
Maryland at Northwestern.....NORTHWESTERN
Rutgers at Nebraska.....NEBRASKA


Monday: 1-1
Season to Date: 35-15

And Cliff has become the guy in gym class that you didn’t cover and still nobody threw him ball

Likely Miami bound per Matt Zenitz. I guess the buyout too much for ru to overcome.

Its very early so there is going to be alot of wackiness though it is useful to see some trends especially with respect to schedule strentgh. There will certainly be some sort of ridiculous small school outlier in the top 30 and some major school languishing in the 200 range.

I think Oregon fans will be quite pleased

What am I doing here? Attempting to decompose our Kenpom rating of +10.01 into contributions of individual players.

How?
For each game Bart attempts to decompose the margin by player. See: the NET column here (https://barttorvik.com/box.php?muid=Saint+Peter'sRutgers11-11&year=2025).

I took this along with the minutes played and Kenpom rating of each opponent (and home/away/neutral) to compute an ADJUSTED NET.

Then some more math and you get the results. My estimates add up to +10.16 and our actual Kenpom rating is +10.01 so I think this is pretty close. There were also a few minutes played by walk-ons that I didn't account for which is probably some of the error. Also minutes rounding (i.e. the box score gives 201 minutes for the Wagner game, I haven't adjusted for this).

Overall, as a team, we have played 784 possession with a scoring margin of +44 and an adjusted scoring margin of (by my computations) +78.94. This should yield a rating of +10.07. The actual rating on the site is +10.01. That is close enough for me.

If you are averse to spreadsheet basketball, uh, don't read this.

All the usual caveats about how this is a huge approximation and how a lot of defensive stuff does not show up in the box score etc. This is just fun interesting numbers. It is not THE RIGHT ANSWER to anything in particular.

Note, for each possession each player on the court gets 0.2 possessions NOT 1 possession. That is also why I included Adj NET per 20 possessions as that corresponds to 100 team possessions.

Hate when he does it but he does it every chance he gets. Up 9 with 4 minutes and change left and he went into his prevent offense. Take the shot clock all the way down and just throw one towards the rim.

The thing that drives me crazy is that getting the shot clock down isnt even done while running an offensive set, its simply just dribbling right past mid-court far too often. It pretty much ensures a low % shot.

UCLA goes on a 8-0 run and cuts it to 1. A win at the end makes no one talk about it but if we dont pull that one out led by a clutch ace corner 3, its probably the only thing we are talking about.

I dont know what pike has to do but hes gotta start doing something in the offensive half court.

He must be a board member. Pay close attention to the fridge!!!

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Let's get the hype train going while we still can. There will be plenty of time to be miserable if we follow this win up with a bunch of losses

1. Dylan Harper is among the best players in college basketball. He is only going to get healthier and better. Can do it all. The healthier he gets the more we will see him finishing at the rim and drawing fouls. Announcers said he lost 12 pounds not the 9 we heard before

2. Ace Bailey is showing a lot of growth. It can be up and down at times and Ace can be streaky. His shot selection last night was the best so far. Ace's defense and rebounding has come a long way over the course of the year. There are still many massive scoring nights from Ace coming this season

3. Role players had nowhere to go but up. It was soo sooo bad that regression to the mean says these players will improve. We just need a couple players to step up each game to compliment Ace and Dylan

4. Lathan showing intensity and effort on defense and rebounding. He looks much more locked in focused and determined to play D and rebound. Would like to see him get a few more post touches especially if the matchup is favorable since he can score and draw fouls. Need a little inside out game occasionally

5. Grant brings length athleticism hustle and activity. A ton of characteristics the team was missing. Lathan/EO, Grant, Ace... that helps with the defense and rebounding

6. Jwill, Acuff, Jmike... pick your spots and play in your lane. All 3 didn't force it as much. Let the game come to you. Acuff shoot the 3, jMike play D and pass, JWill drive and dish or finish at the rim but only when there is a lane

7. Ogbole has shown flashes. Randomly some nice catches and traffic drop step finish. Big offense board for a dunk. He may feel more comfortable off the bench. Sets massive screens that lead to buckets at times that go unnoticed. EO and Lathan can combine for 10 and 10

8. Martini maybe gains some confidence in limited minutes. Played better D. Hit a 3.... at some point maybe he gets hot in a couple games where he knocks down a few 3's

9. Pike takes too long to figure his teams out and clearly should have went to Grant sooner, but he may have found it with Grant and Acuff playing more, Martini less, Derkack and Hayes to the end of the bench

10. RU fans deserve a miracle, we truly do

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EDIT- Obviously a joke:

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Anybody else looking forward to watching Sanders crash and burn at Colorado? He just seems to be at an all time level of self-loving cockiness, even for him. I personally think he's way over his head and won't have as easy a time as he had in the SWAC.

I get TV for Free, but thought some of you might be interested in this new Sports package, which includes the Big Ten Network—

Starting this thread back up!

It's officially transfer portal season and there's a lot of movement expected this offseason with guys leaving for the NFL, guys entering the portal and new guys joining the team via the portal since it's essentially free agency.

To make things easier for you, we here at The Knight Report have decided to make this the one stop shop for everything Rutgers Football and the transfer portal this offseason.

Below you can see which players have entered the portal, who's committed to joining the Scarlet Knights via the portal and which prospects that the staff has offered so far.

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CONFIRMED VISITOR LIST.....

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The way this starting lineup (I called it, btw) and rotation playing, and a healthy Dylan, go steal those raids ins and be DAWGS.

I’m still an “IN” btw

The overreaction over last game was insane. Lots of you saying our program was over…

Finally healthy and can hopefully make a nice run, let’s see.

I see in different rankings that they are either Juniors or Seniors. Do any of them actually have any eligibility left after this year? I remember reading that Poz does but may not use that year because he's graduating from grad school. Would sure like to see him come back and the others. Is it because of the covid year?

Summary: First pattern thread of the winter. Just about every medium/long range model (especially the ensembles of the GFS, CMC and Euro, which are used most for trend forecasts beyond about 7-8 days) continues to show (as mentioned in the Christmas Eve snow thread) a major pattern shift to a cold to possibly very cold regime starting by next weekend, with multiple possible storm systems after that, some of which could bring snow (possibly substantial amounts) to the eastern US and our area for much of January. And just about every well-known meteorologist is honking about the upcoming pattern change. Yes, I know it's usually relatively cold and snowy in January, but we're talking likely colder than normal (and possibly much colder than normal - especially in the SE US) and snowier than normal (NB gets about 8-9" of snow, on average in Jan) from about 1/4 through 1/25 and given the paucity of snow for most the past 3 winters this is noteworthy. The cold looks like a lock, at least through mid-Jan, while the snow is always much iffier to predict more than a week in advance, so we'll wait and see. And based on the @e5fdny weather clause, any specific storms that materialize will be covered in separate threads when and if they look real (usually 4-5 days out), with the first possible threat around 1/6. Hope some find this interesting.

Details: The video link, below, from John Homenuk one of the best medium/long-range forecasters out there explains the meteorology behind the pattern change much better than I could, but briefly, instead of the warm pattern we expect to have for the next week, which features strong west to east jet stream flow from the mild Pacific across the US, a strong ridge is forecast to build from Cali to Alaska forcing the jet stream to ride up and over it and then down east of the Rockies, bringing very cold polar air down from Canada into the eastern half of the US, plus high latitude "blocking" is expected with another strong ridge up in NE Canada/Greenland acting to "hold" the cold air in place in the eastern US and to slow down the storm systems that are expected to rotate through the eastern US from about 1/5 onward.

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With regard to the teleconnections, which are often used to forecast long range patterns, we're forecast to have the weak La Nina continue and to have the MJO (Madden-Julian Oscillation) move into phases 8 and 1 (associated with cold/snowy here) and to have a sustained combination of a -AO (Arctic Oscillation) and +PNA (Pacific/North America), which is the combo we've had for ~50% of 6"+ snowstorms in NYC, as per the famed DonSutherland on AmericanWx (see his graphic below and his post linked below), plus we'll also likely have a -NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and a -EPO (Eastern Pacific Oscillation). Cold air in place, plus moisture from storms could mean significant snow, although it's still too early to predict specific storms (but they are showing up on the long range guidance) and it's always possible the cold/snow just don't work out, as very cold air can suppress storms to our south or if the cold air weakens for a bit, a storm could always cut west of us bringing mix/rain. DT/WxRisk does a great job explaining all of the teleconnections in the video link below.

https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/61402-january-2025/?do=findComment&comment=7513129
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In addition, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is on board for colder than normal weather for much of the eastern US from 1/4-1/10 (with normal precip amounts) and is also predicting colder and wetter than normal conditions from 1/11 through 1/24 in their Weeks 3/4 forecast; just showing the temp graphics below. FYI, I only did one pattern thread last winter, for a warm/low snow first half of Feb, which verified, followed by a cold and potentially snowy period after that, which did not verify at all for cold, but did verify for above normal snowfall for most from 2/12-2/17. Overall, since 2017 I've done 1-2 pattern threads per winter, featuring 10 of 13 temperature patterns verifying and 9 of 13 snowfall patterns verifying (with below normal, normal and above normal as possible outcomes, random guessing would mean 4 out of 13 verifying). That means the pros kind of know what they're doing.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/WK34/

Any good new songs or albums released this year?

Biggest surprise and solid release on June 23, 2020 by the band Hum (famous for the 1995 song Stars), which had not released an album since 1998.

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Car Seat Headrest has also released a new album, which is not as strong as the last album:

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Badly Drawn Boy- Banana Skin Shoes
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Elvis Costello- No Flag - very solid song

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BPMD- American Made

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Since the LA wildfire thread got locked, figured folks might still be interested in the short and long range weather forecasts for that area. Unfortunately, there is extreme fire danger for today through Wednesday with wind gusts of 20-40 mph at the lower elevations and 50-70 mph in the mountains, which combined with very dry fuels, very low humidity and ongoing wildfires means we could see continued growth in these wildfires and potentially new fires if people are not careful. It is worth noting that these winds, while extremely dangerous given the ongoing wildfires, are a decent bit lower than the 80-100 mph wind gusts that were observed with the initial wildfires last week, so hopefully the fire spread rates will not be as insane as they were.

In the longer term, unfortunately, neither the GFS nor the Euro shows any rain for SoCal for the next 14 days with the Euro showing perhaps some rain by Day 15, but that's a longshot at this point. On the other hand, wind forecasts look more reasonable after tomorrow and no obvious major Santa Ana windstorms are on the horizon for the next 5-6 days, but winds are difficult to forecast accurately beyond that; humidity will also rise some over the next few days, which will be helpful.

Hopefully after tomorrow the worst of the conditions will be over (and hopefully no more major Santa Ana winds) and recovery can begin for the tens of thousands of people who have been impacted so seriously by this tragedy. Let's try to keep this thread on point, if possible.

https://www.weather.gov/lox/

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/california-fires-winds-updates/

It was suggested an NFL thread for teams / games other than Jets Giants Eagles which have their own threads so here it is