Hill has building blocks for future
Game On
Brian Johnson / Senior Writer
Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: Sports
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The Scarlet Knights had to adjust to there not being a Quincy Douby to base their offense around, and the players who had to step up were still relatively inexperienced.
But the first person to tell you that Fred Hill Jr. is pushing all the right buttons is one of the head coaches in that first-round game yesterday, UConn's Jim Calhoun.
"I think Freddie's doing all the right things - changing defenses, etc," Calhoun said after a win over Rutgers earlier in the year. "They have good players, they just need a couple more of them. Secondly, they just need the experience of his system."
While it's hard to see many positives in a year the Knights were 10-19 and 3-13 in the Big East, one of the only things fans should have been looking for this season was improvement throughout the year.
In an edition of "Game On" before the basketball season started, I said the things RU fans should judge Hill on this season is the teams' work ethic and his recruiting this year.
Well after starting the season at 1-5 and seeming like it might be a dreadful Craig Littlepage type Rutgers year, the Knights did respond to Hill's system.
Rutgers were competitive through the majority of the games and is there anything more to ask for - keep in mind they lost 25.4 points-per-game with the loss of Douby.
"All you can ask is that they compete and get better," Hill said after the Knights' last game of the season. "I'm really pleased, obviously you'd like to win more. There's no question, that's the name of the game."
Sure there was a few embarrassing games - the whole Chicago Invitational was rather hard to watch from press row.