For the second consecutive season, Rutgers entered his regular season finale needing a win to secure a historic NCAA Tournament offer. And for the second time, the Scarlet Knights pulled this off in a dramatic way.
Rutgers nearly hit his first March Madness ticket since 1991 and won consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1988-92 with a 77-70 overtime victory over Minnesota on Saturday. It took longer than it should and was tighter than expected, but aside from an extraordinary series of events like the pandemic that stole them from an NCAA candidacy a year ago, the Scarlet Knights will hear your name on Selection Sunday for the first time in 30 years.
The game told the story of the season of the Scarlet Knights.
Rutgers (14-10, 10-10) had to sweat to win, despite controlling most of the competition. An advantage of 14 points in the second half disappeared as unforced errors accumulated and the Golden Gophers ran a 17-5 run to tie the game with 49 seconds to finish.
A wild final minute of regulation featured two missed attempts to win the Scarlet Knights and a defensive move to save senior guard Jacob Young’s game by sending the game into overtime.
Rutgers took control from the start of the extra period, leaving in a 6-0 streak to take the lead he never abandoned.
Young (23 points, seven assists, four steals, four turnovers) paved the way for the Scarlet Knights.
Rutgers, who has struggled to shoot at 3 points lately, took down eight of his 20 attempts (40%) from the depths. He kept Minnesota with 32.3% of pitches and point guard Marcus Carr without a basket in the first 39 minutes of the game, but allowed Squirrels to resist by conceding 27 free throws.
With its NCAA offer almost guaranteed, the next question for the Scarlet Knights is where they will be sown.
They have a solid track record – combined record of 9-10 in Quad 1/2 games, combined 7-0 in Quad 3/4 games – but not good enough to avoid a bad position in the March Madness photo.
Rutgers was designed as a seed 9 by most bracketologists before Saturday’s victory, and a tight victory over the sliding Gophers will not elevate him much. The Scarlet Knights are allocated to the dreaded 8/9 seed line, which creates a potential second round showdown against major Gonzaga or Baylor seeds in Indianapolis, unless you have a good run in the Big Ten Tournament.
Rutgers still awaits its destination in the conference tournament, where it can land as 7-seed or 8-seed, depending on a pair of results on Sunday.
If Wisconsin wins its midday confrontation with Iowa, the Scarlet Knights are trapped in the 7-seed, no matter what else happens. If the Badgers lose to the Hawkeyes, Rutgers must wait for the outcome of Sunday night’s meeting between Maryland and Penn State.
If the turtles win, the Scarlet Knights end up as the 8-seed. If Maryland loses, Rutgers is the 7-seed.
Rutgers’ opponent on Thursday – Indiana or Michigan State – will depend on the outcome of the Indiana-Purdue clash on Saturday afternoon and the Michigan State-Michigan game on Sunday.
Regardless of the line of seeds on which to land, the overall picture remains the same. After an exasperating ending, a phrase that hasn’t been spoken in Piscataway for three decades can be shouted from the rooftops of the RAC: the Scarlet Knights are going to the NCAA Tournament
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Brian Fonseca can be reached at [email protected].