PISCATAWAY — Jacob Young, the quickest guy on Rutgers’ basketball team, exploded into the lane during a 5-on-5 sequence in Tuesday's practice. It looked like he had the angle to get past his defender.

Turns out, he didn’t.

Caleb McConnell slid in front of Young, poked the ball loose with one of his long arms, snatched it from the grasp of two other players and took off the other way. Two possessions later he stonewalled a Montez Mathis drive with perfect positioning, then beat everyone back for a fast-break layup on a subsequent turnover.

Head coach Steve Pikiell keeps complaining about the Scarlet Knights’ defense this preseason. At least one guy appears to have gotten the message.

Scarlet Knights: RU transfers Young, Yeboah bring new dimensions

“I told Pike I want to be that lock-down defender,” McConnell said. “I want to be that guy who guards the key player on the opposite team.”

The 6-foot-7 sophomore is one of the most intriguing players on Rutgers’ roster. A Swiss Army Knife who can play point guard, shooting guard or wing, he blossomed late last season and ended up shooting team-highs of .357 from 3-point range and .792 from the free-throw line. In the practices open to the media this fall he’s been one of the most consistent performers, along with surefire starters Ron Harper Jr. and Geo Baker.

“I feel way more comfortable, way more mature this year,” McConnell said. “Pikiell is expecting big things from me. I have to live up to those expectations.”

It’s a stark difference from where he stood last year at this time. Pikiell found him under the high-major radar (West Virginia and Ohio State got interested late) and the coach’s recruiting pitch was a blunt challenge: “Everything has to be earned.”

Pampered recruits don’t want to hear stuff like that. McConnell ate it up.

“Every day I live by that,” he said. “That’s something that was instilled in me at a young age. You’ve got to fight for everything.”

After backing up Baker at point guard last winter, look for McConnell to see more minutes as a positionless super-sub, an X-factor who could be a regular on the floor at the end of games.

“He’s been our best rebounding guard, by far, and I’ve challenged someone to be that because we certainly need rebounding out of the guard spot,” Pikiell said. “He’s taken on the role of being a defender; he’s got tremendous length. And (last season’s experience) at point guard really helped him. The best part of our offense is, if he rebounds it, he’s the point guard.”

Rutgers has eight scholarship guards and wings, and in the early going Pikiell will use them all. The competition along the perimeter has been a highlight of the Scarlet Knights’ preseason.

“There’s arguing and pushing and fouling,” McConnell said, with a hint of pride. “We all have to compete for spots. Nobody is promised anything.”

Which is exactly how he likes it.

THREE TAKEAWAYS

1. Rutgers will play more aggressively on both ends this season but Pikiell is rightly concerned about fouling, especially given his squad’s lack of frontcourt depth.

“This year there are more ways to get fouls,” Pikiell said, referring to expected officiating emphases on illegal screens (“when your feet are wider than your shoulders, it’s a foul”), policing flopping and penalizing players who initiate contact by jumping into defenders.

“Early in the year they’ll be tooting the whistle like there’s no tomorrow,” he said. “I grew up in the old Big East days (playing for UConn), when if there was no blood there was no foul . . . I remember playing those Georgetown teams; I thought they fouled on every possession and the referees just gave up.”

2. Free-throw shooting continues to be a struggle. Rutgers ranked last in the Big Ten in that department in 2018-19 (63.7 percent) and shanks from the stripe have plagued the preseason practices witnessed by reporters.

“We’ve spent a ton of time on it,” Pikiell said “You’ve got to have the right guys taking free throws (in games). (Newcomers) Paul Mulcahy, Jacob Young and Akwasi (Yeboah) will help, but other guys got to get better.”

3. An educated guess on Rutgers’ early-season rotation: Baker, Young, Harper Jr. and Myles Johnson as regular starters; Mathis, McConnell, Yeboah and Shaq Carter as situational starters or early subs; Mulcahy and Mamadou Doucoure as regular subs; Pete Kiss and Luke Nathan as situational subs.

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.