Rutgers Basketball adds Slovenian wing Martin Tonejc
Rutgers Basketball continues to round out its 2026-27 roster with the latest addition of 20-year-old Slovenian wing Martin Tonejc.
BB Recruiting Rutgers Basketball adds Slovenian wing Martin Tonejc
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
To be fair, they are very similar and those numbers are from an U19 tournament, whereas Zrno and Badalau's were from the leagues they play in. Tonejc didn't play much at his current team, only appearing in three games.
Zrno, a 21-year old sharpshooter, averaged 17.5 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 3.4 assists per game while shooting 50% from the field and 43.7% from three for KK Slavija, a professional basketball club in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Funny, but let's wait and see. I'm still pulling for a high school kid to get the last slot.
What high school 2026’s are left at this point. Most guys are getting ready or have enrolled by now.
What does an U19 tournament in Europe mean? Is it U19 players from his high level league, or is it an U19 tournament run through the league open to all Euro equivalent of AAU / club teams - ala BBshootout tournaments in NJ? Not trying to be obnoxious but if it’s the latter, this pick up makes no sense. We need defense.
This kid does not provide defense from what I was told, all signs point toward him being a deep down the bench lottery ticket.
It was three game tourney I believe. He's not providing D In say confidently after watching a one minute highlight video.
Ugh - then why would we waste a spot on him? I don’t care if he’s free. Frontcourt D stunk last year and we’ve done very little to upgrade it. Are we counting on Buca who projects to be a reserve? Sydnor who hasn’t played in 2 years? We’ve lost 2 solid defensive reserves in Dortch and Chris and we seem to have no interest in replacing them even though the D was a disaster last year.
Dortch was not good, and Nwuli barely played, he also hacked a bunch, so I don’t count either as solid.
Buchanan / Sydnor will man the four, this new kid will be behind them.
Gurdak / Buca at the five and the plan is to add one more, but I don’t expect a crazy difference maker.
End of the day, they went out and added more offense, which is what they needed. They are confident in their defensive coaching skills to get these guys ready. Does it work? TBD.
Dortch was decent at certain things defensively, like guarding a big on the perimeter, which neither of the new centers can do well. We didn't NEED to add more offense, we were 12th in scoring in conference games, 17th in defense. The team needed to get better defensively first. We've seen Pike when he tries to go offense first.
Last year when they signed zrno and Badalou they were the prospects I anticipated as being difference makers because they had to be for the team to be any good. This year they can take a chance on a euro prospect and not be forced to play him early or even at all. So definitely a better off season than last year. Let's see if they are that much better on the court as well..
Dortch had the skills to be an above average defensive 4. He’s awful at offense so he couldn’t play there because we didn’t have a 5 who could score. Chris was raw but had some potential to be solid at defense.
I strongly disagee that we “needed” additional offense from a flyer Euro who the staff basically knows won’t be good enough to be on the court on D. We added Smith, Jones, Gurdak and Sydnor who are all proven D1 scorers. And we returned our best scorers from last season. When filling out a deep bench with utility players, you’d think the goal would be to add guys who are likely to be better than the guys we have at defense even if they aren’t strong offensive players to give us some utility options when we’re struggling to get stops. I expected us to be scoping out 6-7ish version of guys like Buca or Jalen Miller (when he was at RU).
You get good athletes and defense can be taught. It's an attitude, someone posted the clip of hurley saying his strategy is to get good offensive players and he will teach them defense..."12th in scoring" is not even good lol but either way, Tariq Francis was the only player on the team that could shoot jumpers consistently. Powers was inconsistent but hopefully he takes a step this year. If the team can't shoot it cripples them offensively because teams will load the paint not afraid to help off of their man. Buchanan driving to the basket was the next best offense after Tariq. No bueno..
"All of our best scorers from last season" I'm curious as to who you identify as the returning scoring talent?
I don’t think anyone would argue that Tariq can score given he averaged 18 ppg - so put him aside. In BIG play:
Buchanan - 8.9 ppg on 46.2%
Lino - 7.2 ppg on 46.7% (only 17.7 min)
Those are good offensive numbers. Powers gave us almost 8 ppg too. We added 4 offense first portal players and a frosh who is supposed to be a good shooter. Why the heck are we targeting a Chol type first year player who will be very very unlikely to see any meaningful minutes? Someone who defends would, in contrast, be highly likely to earn situational spot minutes because there will be times where we can afford to have one non-scorer on the court who helps us on D.
We have versatile scoring options. Guys who score in different ways. We do not need a soft Euro who can shoot an open 3. When will Pike learn that this never helps us? Even for the very best shooters, it’s very hard to check into a game cold to play the role of catch and shoot sniper. We don’t need that.
PJ Hayes shot around his SD 39% for RU in the 10-12 games where he played meaningful minutes. He hurt us in other ways, of course, but my point is that he did not help us in the games where he was brought in to occasionally knock down a 3. He missed nearly all of those and is a big reason his shooting percentage tanked.
Let's make one thing clear, I'm not saying this kid is additional offense. I think this addition is just weird and random, you could have added a high school recruit that's better suited for the college game imo.
Defense is an attitude and many offensive players don't have it. Hurley is choosing from the best of the best. RU isn't. I agree, 12th isn't good, but it was better than the team finished overall, and probably the 2nd or 3rd best offensive team Pike has had. We were outscored by 8.5 a game in conference, giving up basically 80. You think this team is scoring almost 9 more a game? Without better defense it won't matter. Smith may be a worse defender than Grant. Gurdak is a different defender than EO, we'll see if it translates to better. Jones over Powers is the one decent step up defensively. Really no idea on Syndor, he's the teams wildcard.
On paper, it is a more well rounded offensive team. Doesn't mean it scores more, just may do it differently.
I agree that from the minimal footage I've seen, the kid won't be a contributor, at all. Given this and our difficulty in recruiting NJ, I'd prefer we'd found a local kid with a couple of mid-major offers who would be excited to play in the B1G for the state university.
These guys can't shoot, team is severely limited if Mark and Buchanan are required to make shots. You need those guys to be able to play to their strengths. Mark is also a sophomore with limited experience, you had to bring in some guys that can score. As far as this signing, I'm assuming there isn't much money left to play with now, what type of defensive specialist are you going to get in the portal now? With little money to spare? Defensive specialist usually means they are awful offensively, players like that hurt the team. You are not going to get mawot mag or anyone close to that. I see this as just rolling the dice, high risk high reward type of thing.. also take it as a sign that they've already shot their load financially..
I guess - but at this point aren’t the frosh with the most potential taken already? When looking to fill out the end of a bench, isn’t the goal usually to add guys who might be able to play a role in spot minutes? There will be a game Sydnor and Buchanan are both in foul trouble, one of them hurt or sick, whatever. Then what? Smith is next in line (and the only current option on the roster) to slide to the 4. Considering he ranks in the bottom 5% of D1 on defense, seems to me it wouldn’t be that hard to find a cheap back up forward who would upgrade our reserve options defensively at this position.
We don’t need an elite specialist to upgrade our current options. We should be looking for a utility player who plays forward and is not certain to be a net negative on defense other than Buchanan and Sydnor (Smith is not going to provide this - just like PJ didn’t. You don’t go from worst 5% of D1 to servicable in one offseason). This is a clear hole on the roster. One that’s easy to fill. And instead we are adding flyers from Europe who play no defense.
It is playing with fire to go into the season with only 2 forwards on the roster who are not massive liabilities on defense. And we don’t even know how good Sydnor will be as he hasn’t played in 2 years. It can’t cost much to add someone else’s statistical version of Nwuli. Someone with Mag’s sophomore season stat line would be ideal. 11.7 mpg, 2.9 ppg, 1.9 rpg. Crappy shooting metrics. Not a high roller.
We added two extremely high volume 3 point shooters in Smith and Jones. Tariq is clearly a scorer / shooter. Even Sydnor made 49 threes as a frosh on pretty good efficiency. Wooten is an incoming frosh known for shooting. Powers is also a scorer - hopefully he can improve his efficiency but he too will have a lot of competition. And Duarte. There’s no purpose to adding a soft flyer Euro. It’s just a wasted spot.
To my point above, wouldn't it have been possible to bring in an equivalently talented kid, from my perspective, a 6'8" bruiser without high-major offers?
Francis is probably the only guy they are counting on to score...the rest of these guys are not proven at this level, you have to find out who actually can score at this level and in what ways. You guys keep using these stats and analytics when there was no one on the team able to make a jump shot besides Tariq. Lol offense definitely needed to be a priority. But in regards to this signing idk maybe they ran out of money or saving the remaining money for one last solid piece..idk but I feel like this signing isn't as bad as you make it seem.
I mean who knows. But a 6'8" wing/forward is in high demand lol I'm not sure a 6'8" wing defender that can play on the big 10 level with even decent offensive skills is just laying around the portal..
The Euro we just added has no chance of being better than guys like Powers and Lino at anything. You realize that right? There are tons of guys still in the portal who wouldn’t cost much but would at times, help us put a better defensive product on the court. You keep saying D can be taught yet how did that work out for us last season? We were historically bad and I’m not sure what we’ve done to improve it.
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We shouldn’t be targeting someone with “decent” offensive skills - we can’t afford that and good defense in one package. Sophomore Major Mag. Remember him. You’d hate his offensive profile. 41.3% from the field / 23.5% from the field. Hideous for a forward.
Denis had a profile suggesting “decent” offense. Actually - I’d rather have simply kept him then brought in a new Euro project. Just because these guys scored in a fluff league in Europe doesn’t mean they are even better at offense than the D1 guys in the portal who have ugly looking scoring stats.
Again, if you can find a sophomore mawot mag in the portal and you can afford him, yes take him over this guy. But for reference bryce dortch went pretty early in the portal to notre dame and he wasn't even close to sophomore mag as a defender or offensively..
Your worried about wasting a spot on a potential shooter all be it very small chance it works out.
However your good with what we signed early at PG and both guys playing major minutes?
Let’s see how it plays out but it is head scratching
Yes - we have tons of options at point. Lino Mark will improve. j Mike is an experienced veteran - not great but ok. Jones film actually reminds me of Geo’s film. Geo wasn’t a PG until suddenly he was. And Smith played some point forward at CC. We have lots of options there for them to work with.
Not going to stress about the 12th man on roster addition whose not going to play unless RU has a blowout going.
GO RU
GO RU
If you’re down 15 and need 3’s he can be a spot up 3 guy. He’s tall enough to get it off.