NEPTUNE, N.J. — Mike Rice was waiting outside the blue warehouse where he works as the director of team tournaments for Hoop Group, putting on high school and Amateur Athletic Union basketball tournaments.
He had put in a full morning and was preparing for a full afternoon and evening in the big business of youth basketball.
The college basketball season may have ended last month on Kris Jenkins’s dramatic winning shot for Villanova. But for Rice, the former Rutgers coach, that ending was the beginning of an all-important second season: recruiting season.
Rice’s career nearly disintegrated three years ago when a widely viewed videotape showed him cursing Rutgers players, throwing balls at them and using homophobic slurs.