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PISCATAWAY, N.J. — In the moments before Rutgers basketball took on St. John's at the World's Most Famous Arena, with a Hall of Fame coach on the opposing bench and a roster brimming with talent, Brandin Knight gathered the team in the locker room. His message wasn't a cliché about playing hard or sticking to the game plan. Instead, he offered a single, pointed directive.
“He told us to dominate every possession,” senior guard Jamichael Davis recalled. “Dominate. That was the key word.”
The Scarlet Knights exploded out of the gate, seizing an 18-point halftime lead that stunned onlookers. Although St. John's clawed back to win in quadruple overtime, the exhibition revealed the moxie of a team led by its associate head coach. “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.”
After 10 seasons as an assistant at Rutgers, Knight's moment in the spotlight has arrived — though not under the circumstances he would have chosen. Head coach Steve Pikiell is undergoing intensive chemotherapy for cancer and has empowered the 44-year-old Knight to run the team when he's absent. It's an unusual situation that no one anticipated, but Knight was well-prepared for it.
“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,” Knight said. “He's one of the best people you could ever work for in training.”
Pikiell's inclusive approach is atypical. Some coaches run the entire operation with minimal input from players or staff; in some programs, assistants' duties are limited to recruiting and scouting. But Pikiell's staff is deeply involved in instruction during practice. “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.”
Knight leans on Pikiell for advice on managing various aspects of the job, but he credits Pikiell's selflessness as the key to their partnership. “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.”
Key Analysis
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino, who faced Knight's squad in the exhibition, offered high praise. “Brandin's paid his dues to be ready for this moment,” Pitino said. “To be honest, I thought he'd be a head coach a long time ago, because he's got all the ingredients.”
Knight's basketball pedigree is impeccable. His father, Mel Knight, was a standout at Seton Hall University in the 1960s. Brandin starred at Seton Hall Prep before leading Pittsburgh to two Big East titles as a point guard and later returning to the Panthers as a coach. He didn't know 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 with longtime Pikiell assistant Jay Young at Northeastern. Skerry thought the fit would be good and sent along a recommendation.
After three years with Rutgers, Knight had an opportunity to join the staff at Auburn, which was loading up on blue-chip recruits. He 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 turned the corner, ending a 30-year NCAA Tournament drought with unheralded players like 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 teams defended and how tough we were. B-Knight did a really good job of bringing that out in me.”
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 with head-coaching opportunities. But there were reasons 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.”
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.”
'Trust Yourself, You've Been Prepared'
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 would be times he'd be unable to coach or would have to avoid large crowds because his immune system was compromised. 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, Knight is on his own in terms of working the referees, calling timeouts, choosing substitutions and player combinations, and answering reporters' questions afterward. That's all new for him. “Game-wise he 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 brains 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. “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.”
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 the players onto the court with an exhortation to dominate the day. Practice opened with a fast-break drill — the goal was to accumulate a certain number of points in a limited time — and when they achieved it on a Christian Gurdak layup right before the buzzer, Knight leaped 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 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.
Originally reported by yahoo.