PISCATAWAY – Moments before Rutgers basketball faced St. John’s, with its Hall of Fame coach and lineup loaded with big-time talent, Brandin Knight offered some brief advice in the locker room of the World’s Most Famous Arena.
It wasn’t “we can beat these guys” or “let’s play our game” or some similar coaching platitude.
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“He told us to dominate every possession,” senior guard Jamichael Davis said. “Dominate. That was the key word.”
The Scarlet Knights came out of the gate and landed a right hook, taking an 18-point halftime lead to the shock of everyone watching. St. John’s got off the canvas and went on to win in quadruple overtime, but the takeaway from the exhibition game was the Scarlet Knights’ moxie with their associate head coach at the helm.
“A lot of people were surprised we competed like that, but he wasn’t,” forward Darren Buchanan said. “During the game he was really listening to us, trying to see what we see on the floor, and he was taking that into consideration.”
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After 10 seasons as an assistant on the banks, Knight’s moment onstage has arrived. It’s not exactly the one he wanted or envisioned – Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell is undergoing intensive chemotherapy for cancer and has empowered the 44-year-old to run the team when he’s absent – but most people don’t get to choose when the moment calls or the circumstances it hands you.
It’s an unusual situation that no one saw coming, but Knight was well-prepared nonetheless.
“This is where Pikes has always been great for me – there’s not a big adjustment on the day-to-day stuff, because he’s always included me,” he said. “He’s one of the best people you could ever work for in training. There are some coaches that run the entire operation and there is very little input that is usually given or heard from the players or staff on court.”
In some programs, the assistants’ duties end at recruiting and scouting opponents. Not with Pikiell, whose staff does a ton of instructing during practice.
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“He’s empowered all of us over the course of 10 years we’ve been here, being able to help on the basketball side,” Knight said. “So being thrust into this position, it’s not the first time the guys hear me, it’s not the first time I’ve heard my voice. I lean on him for a great deal of advice on managing certain things, but the reason why he’s the best is because he’s so selfless. I’ll say, ‘Pikes, what do you want me to do’ and he’ll say, ‘do your thing.’
“I want to be very clear: This is his program. But he’ll be like, ‘B, I’m leaning on you; I trust you.'”
That’s the fruit of a decade-plus together.
“Brandin’s paid his dues to be ready for this moment,” St. John’s head coach Rick Pitino said after the exhibition. “To be honest, I thought he’d be a head coach a long time ago, because he’s got all the ingredients.”
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Knights’ Jersey hardwood credentials are unimpeachable. His father, Mel Knight, was a big-time player at Seton Hall University in the 1960s. He starred at Seton Hall Prep before leading Pitt to two Big East titles as a point guard and later rejoined the Panthers as a coach.
He didn’t know Steve Pikiell when Pikiell was hired by Rutgers in 2016. But Pat Skerry, now the head coach at Towson, had worked with Knight at Pitt and worked with longtime Pikiell assistant Jay Young at Northeastern, thought the fit would be good and sent along a recommendation.
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After three years with Rutgers Knight had an opportunity to join the staff at Auburn, which was loading up on blue-chip recruits. Knight recalls another coach getting in his ear about it.
“The comment that this coach had made was the burning reason why I stayed,” Knight said. “He said, ‘Brandin, you know, Rutgers is a place where coaches go to get fired.’ That was his comment.”
Knight stayed and Rutgers the corner, ending a 30-year NCAA Tournament drought with the unheralded likes of Geo Baker, Ron Harper Jr., Caleb McConnell and Myles Johnson.
“He helped me a lot just in terms of toughness,” Baker said. “Coming out of high school I was a skilled, finesse type of player. You saw how our (Rutgers) teams defended and how tough we were. B-Knight did a really good job of bringing that out in me.”
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Knight provided an important counterbalance to Pikiell.
“He’ll get in your face when he’s challenging you,” Baker said. “Pikiell is calmer, more, ‘Come up to my office later’ and he’ll tell you what you did wrong a little bit nicer. That’s two different styles but they work well together, because there are times when you need both.”
After the Scarlet Knights’ rise from the ashes, Knight’s phone rang off the hook. But there were reasons for him to stay put. Rutgers compensated him well, and he absorbed a lesson from his mentors at Pitt, Ben Howland and Jamie Dixon.
“What matters most is the people you work for and work with,” Knight said. “There was one job I was in the running for last year that I didn’t take because I thought the AD was that good, and I knew I probably wouldn’t be working for them for long. But also I think I have a great thing here. I wanted to make this place successful.”
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He added. “I’m proud of what we’ve done here, even though we’ve taken a step back the last couple of years, but if I was leaving Rutgers for a head-coaching opportunity it would be for something I couldn’t pass up. But also, whenever I was leaving Rutgers I wanted to be leaving Rutgers because we left it in good standing.”
Obviously no one foresaw Pikiell’s cancer diagnosis. After undergoing successful surgery to remove the tumor, Pikiell consulted with doctors about the path forward and concluded that there were times he’d be unable to coach, or would have to avoid large crowds because his immune system was compromised.
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So he’s at Rutgers’ practices some of the time – last week, he was there several days – and other times he stays home, breaks down film and advises from afar. When the ball goes up, thought, Knight’s on his own in terms of working the refs, calling timeouts, choosing the subs and the player combos, answering reporters’ questions afterward. That’s all new for him.
“Game-wise he (Pikiell) watches, and I’ll ask him to be critical of what he sees in evaluating me, the staff, the bench, the peripheral things,” Knight said. “He’s very good with helping me with all the ancillary things. And things he can still take off my plate, administratively, he handles those things and we work well together. But he said, ‘B, do what makes you feel comfortable.’
Knight also picks the brain of friends in the business, including Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway – “his big thing was ‘trust yourself, you’ve been prepared,'” Knight said.
“One of the greatest pieces of advice came from (Saint Peter’s coach) Bashir Mason,” Knight said. “He said, ‘Spend more time trying to make the guys more like yourself and less like themselves.’ For me, as a player, guys were more talented than I was, but the only thing I ever cared about was winning. If I can get, in the Instagram and social media era, the kids to care more about their teammates and if we win, we all win – that concept, that’s me. That’s who I am.”
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On Tuesday, Knight opened a pre-practice film session by wishing freshman guard Imahri Wooten a happy birthday, then broke down screen coverages in perfectly Pikiell-esque fashion. He sent them onto the court with an exhortation to “dominate the day.”
Practice opened with a fast-break drill – the goal was to accumulate a certain amount of points in a limited time – and when they achieved it on a Christian Gurdak layup right before the buzzer, Knight leapt into the air and pumped his fist.
Buchanan said he took the news of Pikiell’s cancer hard, but Knight’s stewardship has made a tough situation a little bit easier.
“B-Knight has done a great job of assuring us nothing is really going to change, and he’s going to do whatever he can to make sure we’re in the right position,” the senior said. “And he’s doing just that.”
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Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: ‘I trust you.’ How Brandin Knight stepped up for Rutgers basketball
