The Rutgers basketball program was in the news for all of the wrong reasons this season as it had an all-time bad year, winning just one Big Ten game. As a result of the awful season Rutgers unsurprisingly fired head coach Eddie Jordan and is now searching for his replacement.
The first name that came up as a potential replacement was Danny Hurley, the current coach of Rhode Island. Hurley is a former assistant coach at Rutgers and is from New Jersey, so he was expected to give serious consideration to taking the job. By all accounts he was the guy Rutgers wanted, but he decided to turn down the offer and stay at URI with a team that is expected to be very good next season.
The other candidates that were mentioned beyond Hurley didn't inspire all that much optimism, but one name stood out as extremely intriguing: former Duke star Jay Williams. Williams has never coached before, but he is from New Jersey and considered playing his college basketball at Rutgers before he ultimately decided to play for Mike Krzyzewski.
Williams had a preliminary talk with Rutgers athletic director Pat Hobbs about a week ago, but it was not a formal interview. At that time some thought Williams could emerge as a serious candidate, but instead he has pulled his name out of consideration. Despite the thought that Williams could become a serious candidate, it reportedly never really happened.
Although Williams doesn't have any coaching experience he is a well-known guy with great connections. The former Duke star might be exactly the type of guy Rutgers needs as their next coach because one of their big issues has been recruiting, and Williams would likely attract some players that never would have considered Rutgers before.
It is hard to blame Williams, though, for pulling his name out as he likely doesn't want his first coaching job to be as big of a rebuild as Rutgers is. If Williams is serious about getting into coaching he will likely have plenty of opportunities in the future to do so, but for now working as an ESPN analyst is likely more appealing than coaching a team that just won seven games.
