Rutgers athletic director Keli Zinn is already closing in on a new head coach for Rutgers women’s basketball. According to Brian Fonseca and Steve Politi of NJ.com, Rutgers is targeting LSU assistant coach Gary Redus II to be the program’s new head coach. A deal has not been finalized yet, but it could be done early this week, barring any drastic disruptions. If a deal is finalized, Redus would become just the fourth head coach in the entire program’s history.
Redus has spent the last four years with LSU and was on staff when the Tigers won the national championship in 2023.
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Redus has no head-coaching experience, but he is regarded as one of the nation’s top recruiters for women’s basketball. On top of that, he has familiarity with Zinn and the current Rutgers University president, William Tate IV, from their shared time at LSU.
Redus’s coaching experience includes his stint as an assistant at LSU and stints as an assistant at SMU, Vanderbilt, and Division II Delta State. He was also a graduate assistant at West Georgia.
In addition to his role as an assistant coach, Redus was also the recruitment coordinator for the Commodores during his time there. He played a major role in recruiting one of Vanderbilt’s top recruiting classes of the decade in 2021. On top of that, his LSU bio credits him with helping to recruit the unanimous No. 1 freshman class that included all five-stars in 2025.
Redus spent his playing career at South Alabama, where he appeared in 32 games. Redus also spent time overseas, playing in professional leagues in China, Iraq, Mexico, and Venezuela.
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His current contract at LSU is valued at $305,000, and it states that he would not owe the Tigers a buyout if he is moving on to a collegiate head coaching job.
If everything goes through, Redus will be tasked with rebuilding a program that is at one of the lowest points in its history. Rutgers women’s basketball has only had three head coaches during its lifetime, two of whom have become legends in the sport: Theresa Grentz and C. Vivian Stringer. The program began to decline in the latter quarter of Stringer’s career and has only gotten worse since, finishing at the bottom of the Big Ten in two of the last three years under former head coach Coquese Washington. Washington was let go early last week.
Now it appears that Zinn has found someone she believes can restore the program to its glory days.
