One is soft-spoken, the other is outspoken. One is fatherly, the other is a firebrand. One was promoted from within, the other was brought in. Fred Hill Jr. of Rutgers and Bobby Gonzalez of Seton Hall have contrasting styles and backgrounds, but the two skilled and savvy coaches face the same uphill task: Turning around an underachieving men’s basketball team that plays in one of the nation’s most competitive—and visible—leagues, the newly expanded Big East.
To succeed, they will have to buck a dismal trend. Steve Keller, a Neptune-based hoops insider who writes the National Recruiting Report, puts it this way: “The best kid in Kansas wants to go to Kansas.” But the best kids in New Jersey….?
“You’ve got big schools like Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, recruiting New Jersey and New York City hard,” says Gonzalez. “Everybody’s trying to get these kids. One of my challenges—and Freddy Hill’s—is to keep some of these kids home.”
On January 3, Rutgers and Seton Hall meet for the first of two regular season games. You’ll see the differences: Hill, in front of the Rutgers bench, studying the court like a chessmaster; Gonzalez, a blur, working the officials, cajoling and cheering his Seton Hall Pirates. All in all, it will appear they’re coaching a different game.
These contests mean a lot locally, to be sure. But they also mean a lot on a national level. Will the teams qualify for the year-end tournament, with its attendant ballyhoo, and bucks?
“My read on today’s kids is that they all want to be pros,” says Seton Hall’s Gonzalez. “They love the NBA, they want to make money. Whether it be the NBA or Europe, they’re all looking beyond college.”
Rutgers and Seton Hall basketball teams certainly have glimpsed the mountaintop, but die-hard fans and donors aren’t known for their patience. The Scarlet Knights can point to the 1976 team that put Rutgers in the Final Four of the NCAA tournament for the first and only time. Rutgers has not been invited to the top tourney since 1991. Last March, head coach Gary Waters resigned under pressure after a 19-14 season.
The Pirates have made it to “the dance” (the NCAA tournament) nine times, getting as far as the “Sweet 16” in 2000. But last season ended ignominiously when Seton Hall was ousted in the first round of the NCAA tournament, losing to Wichita State by twenty points, forcing Pirates head coach Louis Orr to walk the plank.
The hiring of Hill and Gonzalez happened to be the third time in the last ten years that Rutgers and Seton Hall have simultaneously changed basketball coaches—a testament to their predicaments.
Seton Hall replaced the laid-back Orr with his stylistic opposite: the fast-talking, demanding, media-friendly Gonzalez. The 43-year-old native of Binghamton, New York, had previously led moribund Manhattan College to respectability, compiling four twenty-win seasons and two NCAA tournament appearances (including an upset of powerhouse Florida) in seven years.
The son of a used-car salesman, Gonzalez grew up in what he calls a “loud, proud, fighting family” of five kids. “I came up the hard way,” he says, proceeding to list every increment of his ascent, starting with high school JV coach. As a result, no challenge fazes him. “Seton Hall is considered a tough job,” he reflects. “People say, ‘You play in the Meadowlands, it’s not an on-campus arena, it’s a small Catholic college that doesn’t have the buzz of big schools that have football.’ But you try to look at the glass as half full.”
When Gonzalez got the job in April, Seton Hall had five scholarships available for this season—and zero players committed. He filled three slots, notably landing one of the top unsigned point guards in the nation, Eugene Harvey of St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, in an eleventh-hour effort. It probably didn’t hurt that the head coach at St. Benedict’s is former Seton Hall backcourt star Danny Hurley.
But most important was Gonzalez’s reputation for developing fine point guards and Harvey’s opportunity to start as a freshman. “Everything we could legally do, we did,” Gonzalez says. “We just blitzed him, trying to make a huge impression in a short time. Eugene was a monumental get for us.”
At Rutgers, new coach Hill was a known quantity, having served as Waters’s associate head coach last season. The Garden State native is widely admired for his basketball smarts and his recruiting savvy.
“I’ve been described as a ‘people person,’” says Hill, who accepts the label. “I think I truly care about people, and I want what’s best for them.”
Hill, 47, grew up in Verona and played hoops at Montclair State University, where his father, Fred Hill Sr., was head football and baseball coach. His dad has been baseball coach at Rutgers since 1982. Prowling the sidelines runs in the family. Fred Jr.’s uncle, Brian Hill, is head coach of the NBA’s Orlando Magic. Hill Jr. later coached basketball as an assistant at his alma mater as well as at Rider, Fairleigh Dickinson, and Villanova. In 2005 he arrived at Rutgers.
By the way, that last big-time Seton Hall team, in 2000? Hill was assistant coach and chief recruiter for then coach Tom Amaker.
Jumping into the recruiting fray, Hill set his sights on Eugene Harvey’s friend and teammate at St. Benedict’s, Lance Thomas. The coveted McDonald’s All-American forward had narrowed his choices to Rutgers and Duke. In the end, Thomas picked the storied program of Mike Krzyzewski, or “Coach K,” who has led the Blue Devils to four national championships. Thirteen former “Dukies” now earn NBA paychecks.
“There was no consolation in coming in second to Duke,” Hill says firmly.
Nonetheless, the coach is pleased with his first recruits, including freshman 6-foot-11-inch Senegalese shot-blocker Hamady N’diaye, who played his junior year at Life Center Academy in Burlington. Hill also won an early commitment from Top-40 prospect Corey Chandler, now a senior point guard at East Side High School in Newark.
Neither coach’s efforts are expected to pay immediate dividends. And the recruiting squeeze will only get tighter. Fairleigh Dickinson and Monmouth have sent teams to the NCAA tournament in recent years. Then there’s the Princeton Tigers, perennial terrors of the Ivy League.
“Historically, our best players were New York and New Jersey guys,” says Princeton coach Joe Scott. “It’s important to me, it’s important to our program, to get local kids.” To revive a long-dormant rivalry, Princeton (which already plays Rutgers) has added Seton Hall to its 2006–2007 schedule.
“It’s good for basketball in New Jersey,” Scott says. True, but to some extent recruiting is a zero-sum game, and in the end only one thing matters.
“This league is murder,” says Gonzalez. “When you win, they love you. When you lose, they throw you in the Hudson.”