Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell got his guy.
Senior forward Zach Martini will be spending his final year of college eligibility remaining in the Garden State playing for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Martini made the announcement on social media Wednesday evening.
I’m excited to announce I’ll be committing to Rutgers University after graduating from Princeton this spring!CHOP 🪓🪓🪓 pic.twitter.com/ey73gXIiDm
— Zach Martini (@zachmartini5587) April 4, 2024
Since the Ivy League does not allow graduate student transfers, Martini joins a list of Tigers who have pursued a graduate year elsewhere using their fifth-year of eligibility due to the canceled 2020-21 season. This list will soon include current senior guard and captain Matt Allocco, who is yet to announce his decision but has entered the transfer portal. It also includes Tiger standouts Ryan Langborg ’23 and Jaelin Llewellyn ’22.
The former Knight at Gill St. Bernard’s School in New Jersey will be a Scarlet Knight in the fall, joining one of the most exciting teams in the nation. Pikiell has the fourth-best incoming recruiting class in the nation — it includes five-star recruits Airious “Ace” Bailey and Dylan Harper.
“It’s a wild place”: Welcome to the portal
Changing transfer portal rules have profoundly affected college basketball over the past few years. A recent ruling has allowed college athletes to transfer schools as many times as they wish without a grace period. Furthermore, the rise of NIL has further complicated the portal, adding financial incentives to the list of factors athletes must weigh when choosing a school. Within 48 hours of the portal opening this year, over 10 percent of college basketball athletes entered the portal.
“It’s a wild place,” Martini told The Daily Princetonian. “It’s just constant calls. It’s hard to get a sense of who [Division I coaches] knows you.”
Martini felt that coach Pikiell and the Rutgers program knew him past the box score, influencing his decision to join the Scarlet Knights.
“With coach Pikiell, it was very evident he knew who I was beyond the stats and as a person and a player and what I bring that doesn’t shown up in the stat sheet,” Martini added.
Pikiell was also the first head coach to reach out to Martini, giving him a call within an hour of Martini officially entering his name in the portal. Pikiell had seen Martini play in person earlier this season during the 2023 Jersey Jam when Princeton defeated Rutgers in their season opener.
There were multiple schools interested in Martini, including Stanford, St Mary’s, Richmond, Maryland, George Washington, and St Joe’s, among other schools. But for Martini, his choice to head north to New Brunswick was clear.
“He [Pikiell] was the one I felt most comfortable with and felt like I was wanted and needed there,” Martini told the ‘Prince.’
By staying within New Jersey, Martini stayed close to his roots. Originally from Warren, New Jersey, Martini grew up just ten miles away from Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus. As a child, Martini attended multiple Rutgers football games and has signed Rutgers football memorabilia adorning the walls in his room at home.
“Being a New Jersey kid, both these schools are in my backyard,” Martini added. “To be able to call both of these schools my home in the future is a truly unique opportunity.”
Life in the Big Ten
Next season, the Scarlet Knights will be one of the most exciting teams to watch in college basketball. With Bailey and Harper headlining a star-studded class, Rutgers will be must-see TV wherever they travel next season. Coach Pikiell will look to Martini to help be a vocal leader on this team and embrace a similar role he had at Princeton this season.
“It’s perfect timing,” Martini noted. “To be able to be recruited by this team and play with this caliber of players is nuts. It’s a really exciting opportunity.”
He added, “I’m really excited to take on a leadership role for these guys and that’s something that Coach Pikiell has echoed. He wants me to be a leader on the court.”
For Rutgers, Martini will fill a major need. This past season, the Scarlet Knights ranked 342nd in the nation in three-point percentage, shooting a disappointing 28.7 percent from beyond the arc. These statistics are simply not a recipe for success in the current climate of college basketball.
The good news for Rutgers fans is that Zach Martini is not afraid to let it fly. The senior made 60 triples across the season on 38.5 percent shooting. Moreover, Martini is ranked 93rd in the nation in the KenPom offensive rating, higher than many Power Five stars.
“My shooting is what [Pikiell] is most excited about,” Martini noted. “To be in a pick and roll and pick and pop with [Bailey] is gonna be really fun.”
Martini will not be the only recent Princeton star to go to the Big Ten conference. Last season, Langborg transferred to Northwestern where he had an incredible run with the Wildcats. Notably, in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Langborg put up a career-high 28 points to lead Northwestern to an upset win over the No. 8 seeded Florida Atlantic University Owls.
“He [Langborg] had a lot of success playing in a different league at this level, so it’s really encouraging to see,” Martini added.
“I knew we could win the game”: Reflecting on his time at Old Nassau
After a standout high school career, Martini committed to Princeton and has improved every season under coach Mitch Henderson, despite the setbacks he faced.
His first year in Old Nassau began with news that the Ivy League was canceling the entire 2020–21 season for athletes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While most of the nation played that season, Martini and other Ivy athletes were forced to sit out and watch the rest of the nation compete.
“That was the worst year of my life,” Martini reflected. “To see everyone at different schools practicing ... it was really sad. It was tough, it was a rough year“
For Martini, the opportunity to play a fifth year at Rutgers offers him an experience that the pandemic took from him.
”I’m glad to have the opportunity to play one more year,” Martini said.
During his sophomore year at Princeton — his first year playing college basketball — Martini appeared in just 16 games. Playing on an upperclassmen-heavy team, Martini failed to crack the rotation.
While Martini hoped to change that at the start of his junior year, a potential career-ending injury gave Martini the biggest scare of his life. On October 8th, 2022, Martini’s lung collapsed after taking a charge in practice. After five nights in the hospital, he was sent home and returned to basketball activity after six weeks of recovery.
“I didn’t really know if I’d be able to play basketball again,” Martini noted. “The most important thing was taking a charge again ... Once I did, that gave me confidence and assured me that I’m ready to go.”
That charge happened in early December in a non-conference game against Drexel. After that, his collegiate career took off.
He had a strong end to his junior year, averaging 14.3 points a game and playing in the final 24 games of the season. He knocked down four triples in the Ivy League tournament semifinal against Penn, while in the team’s historic upset against Arizona, Martini had seven points and seven rebounds. This game marked his favorite memory with the Tigers.
“It was the first half of the game… Tosan [Evbuomwan ’23] and I just ran to the corner and my guy came out to me and the rim was wide open and [Evbuomwan] went coast to coast and dunked it,” Martini told the ‘Prince.’ “The whole arena was cheering for us. From that moment on, I knew we could win the game.”
TOSAN EVBUOMWAN GOES END TO END 🤯
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 16, 2023
Princeton has cut the Arizona lead to just 3 👀#MarchMadness @PrincetonMBB pic.twitter.com/wOvWqMSVF9
This past season was Martini’s career high. As a captain and leader alongside Allocco, Martini started in all 29 games for Princeton. In his last-ever regular season game, Martini scored 23 points — including seven triples — at the iconic Palestra, the Penn Quakers’ home gym. While the Tigers ultimately fell short of expectations at the end of the season, they sold out Jadwin Gymnasium twice and put the nation on notice on several occasions.
Martini will be enrolled in the one-year master’s program at the Rutgers Business School this fall.
Tiger fans may not need to wait too long to see Martini sharing the court with the Tigers once more. If the Jersey Jam is renewed for another year, Martini may need to suit up against Henderson and the Tigers.
“I really hope we don’t play each other,” Martini said jokingly. “It’d be a really odd game for me. I’m obviously gonna play my hardest for Rutgers, but that sounds really weird to say against Princeton. If that happens, it’ll be a sight.”
Martini will go down as a Tiger great during one of the best stretches in Princeton’s history. His advice to the current underclassmen in the program was simple and straightforward.
“We had a great year, but we came up short,” Martini noted. “They know what it takes, and they’ve been there. When you fall short, the focus is really amped up another level. I’m really excited to see what they do next year.”
Hayk Yengibaryan is an associate Sports editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please direct any corrections requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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