STUCK IN A RUTGERS

Stringer keeps diving into unsavory well

GOOD vs. evil, easy as pie. In Don Imus, HBO’s investigative “Real Sports” had its male villain. Now it needed its heroine. And Rutgers women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer would perfectly fit that script.

So, in 2007, when Imus & Co., even by Imus’ often cruel standards, recklessly and hurtfully spoofed RU’s women’s team as “nappy-headed ho’s” — the end of his WFAN reign despite his abject apology — “Real Sports” portrayed Stringer as a highly successful “nurturing” coach and a woman blessed with unimpeachable dignity, credibility and honor.

Except it wasn’t true. Not then. Not now.

Stringer, as again demonstrated last week, has never been better than the standard big-salaried, big-time, whatever-it-takes college basketball coach. No better and perhaps worse.

In 2002, on the state school’s dime and time, she recruited Shalicia Hurns, a 6-foot-3 star rebounder and perhaps an answer to Stringer’s deal-with-the-devil prayers.

Hurns had already been thrown out of Purdue then Wabash Valley Community College for a string of lawlessness, including a no-license hit-and-run car crash. She was bad news before she landed in Jersey.

Stringer, who in 2014 was paid $1.6 million and is now on a four-year contract with a total base, pre-incentives salary of $3.5 million, explained that in providing Hurns a third chance, she was magnanimously providing her “a second chance.”

Of course she was. Multiple second chances are bestowed on student-athletes who can help win ball games.

In 2004, while on full scholarship at Rutgers, Hurns bound then beat her roommate, Kelly Evans, a member of RU’s women’s soccer team. Threatening to kill Evans at knifepoint, Hurns held her captive for several hours.

Hurns was arrested and accepted a plea bargain to criminal restraint and issuing terroristic threats. Then, on her “second chance,” she was thrown out of her third college. Her victim transferred.

Of course, none of this made the “Real Sports” piece, nor did Stringer’s defiant, obdurate response to a USA Today reporter who asked if she regrets recruiting Hurns. Her reply: “I don’t apologize for anything.”

And Rutgers allowed her to continue to do as she pleased.

While Hurns was later incarcerated for violating parole, we skip ahead to last week to find that nothing has changed on Stringer’s watch.

Senior forward Caitlin Jenkins was suspended after her arrest for assault and criminal mischief in what the Asbury Park Press reported to be a domestic violence case. Rutgers is her third college.

Two days earlier, Stringer had successfully recruited former Baylor star Alexis Morris. She’s a former Baylor star because the sophomore from Texas was jettisoned after her second arrest, including the charge of possession of a dangerous weapon, since September.

Thus Stringer, on RU’s watch and student and taxpayer funding, remains in the third “second chance business.” Whatever it takes.

In that HBO piece, Stringer, who’d already expressed no regret for having recruited a maximum-risk criminally violent player who next beat and bound a Rutgers student, said that what Imus said constitutes “an assault on all women.”

Then WFAN replaced Imus with Craig Carton. Round and round we go.