How ‘Shoes’ Vetrone Helped Keep the Rutgers Basketball Team Together

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — When Deshawn Freeman found out that Eddie Jordan had been fired as the Rutgers coach last March, he considered his options.

The 6-foot-7 Freeman might have transferred from Rutgers had it not been for one man: Greg “Shoes” Vetrone.

Vetrone, who received the nickname “Shoes” as a small child from his older cousins, had recruited Freeman to Rutgers, coming with Jordan to the family home in North Carolina to meet his mother, Renne Freeman. Deshawn’s future hung in the balance after Jordan was fired and he might well have transferred had Vetrone departed.

“Probably and I don’t think just me overall, I think the other guys Shoes recruited [would have left],” Freeman told me in advance of Rutgers’ season-opener on Friday night against Molloy at the RAC. “Me, Corey [Sanders], Jonathan [Laurent], other guys, we just thought about it.”