3/12/2020 basketball Edit

NCAA Tournament cancelled, the RU Screw strikes again

Chris Nalwasky • TheKnightReport

Beat Writer

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. The drought was all but over.

The Rutgers men’s basketball team was expected to end a grueling 29-year absence from the NCAA Tournament, but the “RU Screw” went into full effect.

Thursday, the NCAA announced that there will be no “big dance” in 2020 due to the Coronavirus outbreak and health concerns. Just Wednesday, the governing body announced that the tournament was to be played in just about empty arenas without the public in attendance.

But now, there will be no dancing for the Scarlet Knights.

It’s an excruciating turn of events for Rutgers, which went 20-11 overall and 11-9 within the Big Ten Conference. Rutgers was projected to be about a No. 10 or a No. 11 seed in the tournament after going 18-1 at home, after notching its first 20-win regular season in 37 years since the 1982-83 season, and after its first overall 20-win campaign since 2003-04.

Rutgers, instead of crumbling, defeated then-No. 9 Maryland in its last home game and won on the road at Purdue, an Achilles Heel of the team. It had home-and-home sweeps over the Boilermakers and Nebraska after never achieving a series sweep of a Big Ten foe since joining the league.

This Rutgers squad isn’t or wasn’t like the teams in years past. It was ranked for the first time in 41 years in January and was ranked or received votes for seven weeks in total.

The cancellation of the NCAA Tournament is disappointing to say the least for the Scarlet Knights and their fans, which sold-out the RAC 10 times including the final nine games in Piscataway.

But despite the ending, just remember the 2019-20 Rutgers Scarlet Knights and head coach Steve Pikiell and his staff for delivering a season of excitement and hope.