Mike Rice Jr. introduced at Rutgers

• My first impression of Rice is that he's a stammerer.
  
• Rice has mentioned the need to bring in 3-4 contributors, so presumably that'll involve a look into the Junior College ranks. Of course, no one's expecting much to start out with, but it'd surely help to have more than eight scholarship players going into the fall.
  

"There will be three to four visits in the next five to seven days," Rice said. "We have located and identified some holes. We have seven or eight scholarship players, certainly there will be holes to fill. We are going to get some quality players. I know it's late. We are against some pretty good teams and programs, but I think we will win some battles down here at the end and probably sign three or four. We are looking to make an impact, especially on this tri-state area." 

Some of the visitors are already known. There'll probably be a lot of speculation about Houston transfer guard Desmond Wade after Steve Politi's column with a quote from the Linden coach earlier in the week.

• A 550k first year salary is less than what Tom Pecora is getting to basically look good in a suit and make nice with the local media at Fordham.
• Salary would only be one concern with attempting to lure assistant Book Richardson from Arizona, who has already turned down St. John's. With Jimmy Martelli following Rice from Robert Morris, and Andrew Toole probably taking over there as HC, that still leaves jobs for two assistants and a Director of Basketball Operations.

UNC's Dexter Strickland threw gasoline on the rumors that soon-to-be-former St. Patrick's (Elizabeth) coach Kevin Boyle will be joining the staff. I think Brandin Knight is even less realistic than Richardson, but Seton Hall's Steve Sauers does have a connection to Rice through the Hoop Group. It may be premature to count out Jim Carr either too. As long as cryptic tweets are spurring discussion, Darren Savino may be a goner. Sorry, that's all I have to go on due to not knowing that much about which options are out there. Presumably, there will need to be at least one assistant with ties to New York City, and at least one African-American.

• The one thing that is for certain is that all of the metro hoops teams will be sharing in their misery together. Right after Seton Hall rebounded from Herb Pope's health woes with the news that Jeremy Hazell and Jeff Robinson were pulling out of the draft, guard Jordan Theodore sprained his MCL.