I was standing on the new practice court for the Rutgers women’s basketball team, the one that is footsteps away from an identical new practice court for the men’s team, when athletic director Patrick Hobbs caught me looking up at flashing red-and-green lights on a floor above.

“Have you not seen the closing room?” he asked.

Um, the closing ... what?

“Come on. You’ve got to see this.”

Hobbs rushed us out the door, up a flight of stairs, and soon we were in a window-lined room with leather sofas, a small conference table and a flat screen TV. Hobbs pushed a button on wall-mounted console and those flashing lights stopped. He pushed another one and -- presto! -- the shades on those windows disappeared and the perfect new practice courts appeared all around us.

The idea, our tour guide Hobbs explained, is to provide a “wow” element for recruits and donors to get them to sign letters of intent and seven-figure checks. But it worked for this jaded sportswriter, too. Although, to be honest, the AD didn’t need the lights and special effects.

He had me at “closing room.” Rutgers has a closing room? I didn’t know that closing rooms were a thing in college sports, but now that I did, I couldn’t help but wonder where the closing happened before this in Piscataway?

A storage closet in the RAC?

The back of a grease truck on College Ave?

Spoiler alert: Such a thing did not exist, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before the RWJ Barnabas Health Athletic Performance Center -- which was officially unveiled to the Rutgers community on Thursday afternoon with a ribbon-cutting ceremony -- it is hard to even come up with a full list of all the things that this athletic department did without.

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The gymnastics team, for example, didn’t have a locker room. When head coach Umme Salim-Beasley told me that the team changed in a public bathroom near the practice area it shared with students, I honestly thought she was kidding. But no. That’s where this team -- a team in the Big Ten! -- got dressed before practices. Try selling that to recruits.

The Rutgers gymnastics team now has one of the finest practice facilities in the country, a 11,850-square-foot training area with two foam pits, Olympic caliber equipment and enough stationary bikes for a Tour de France team.

“It’s better than Penn State, it’s better than Ohio State, it’s better than just about everybody in the Big Ten and most of the SEC, too,” Salim-Beasley told me. Remember: Her gymnasts did not have a place to hang their leotards before this.

I get it. Most Rutgers fans don’t care about gymnastics -- or, for that matter, facilities. They just want to know why the football team can’t score. The victories on Saturday afternoons matter far more than the ribbon-cutting ceremonies like this.

But this is where it starts. If Rutgers wants to have an athletic program that can compete in the Big Ten, it needed a facility that puts its teams on an even footing with the competition. Finally, for four teams at least, the Scarlet Knights have that.

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I’ll admit it: I thought for sure that Rutgers would cut corners with this building. Two decades of covering this athletic department -- the national champions of feasibility studies -- has led to a level of skepticism when it comes to anything like this.

This is the real deal. This is a home run in every way. Rutgers let its athletes become the tour guides on Thursday, and their enthusiasm in showing guests around their new home was all the evidence necessary that the $115 million was money well spent.

Hobbs was practically floating as he gave us a tour, and it’s easy to understand why. This building is more than a new home and a recruiting tool for four teams. It shows that big things, with a leadership and funding, are possible in Piscataway.

And that leads us to the proverbial bucket of water to the face. This 307,000-square foot facility, with all of its state-of-the-art bells and whistles, only inches Rutgers closer to its Big Ten rivals.

Hobbs’ tour took us outside onto a wide terrace, one connected to the offices of both basketball coaches, that is great in every way but one: It looks out on the RAC, which looks even more like the outdated tank-factory that it is.

And to think: Improving the fan experience at the basketball arena can’t even be the priority. Purdue is pouring $60 million into a renovated football training center, and that’s chump change to $196 million spent at Maryland to turn an old hoops arena into a new field house, and even that can’t slice at the $270 million that Northwestern poured into football home.

Rutgers is trying compete with an antiquated bubble that can’t withstand a winter storm. That has to change, and change sooner than later. Next up: A real field house for football.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Hobbs said. “There’s no question about it. The only way to make up the 40-year (facility) deficit we have is to keep going.”

That will only happen with more fundraising, which means more success-starved donors coming forward to write those seven-figure checks. At least now, Rutgers has the perfect facility to show them what’s possible, and a closing room to seal the deal.

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.