Coming off a crushing close loss to in-state rival Seton Hall last Saturday, the Scarlet Knights enter the Winter Break with a game against the Columbia Lions tomorrow afrernoon. Rutgers started off the season winning five of their first six games against non-conference competition. Then came the Michigan State game which was the start of a four-game losing streak for the Scarlet Knights.

During his weekly press conference, head coach Steve Pikiell reiterated faith in his squad, especially in his shooters.

“Having played 4 games on the road out of 10, I’d want to see more consistency out of this team,” said Pikiell. “I’ve seen us do really well on offense in some games and really well on defense in other games. All the games that we’ve lost, we’ve kept it competitive, we have chances to succeed.

“We’ve been in every game, we just haven’t been able to close. Like I tell these guys, the road to success is always under construction: to find success, we have to overcome the obstacles that lay before us. As a coach, I do think that we’re getting better every day. I like Montez’s [Mathis] development, Myles [Johnson] grabbed nine rebounds the other day, Carter is coming in and giving us good minutes: these young guys are boosting us up, giving us the best they have to help us win.”

Pikiell believes the teams’ success isn’t on the outside, shooting threes. Rather, it lies inside the paint and at the foul line.

“We need to get to the line more. I’ve felt like we haven’t gotten to the line enough so far. That’s an area we’ve spent a lot of time in practice trying to improve over the last few weeks.” Pikiell said. “In the games we’ve lost, we’ve almost doubled our opponents with points from the foul line. We take too many threes, so we got to get to the line, give our best free throw shooters a chance to get us some points. Guys like Issa, Geo, Peter, they’re all great foul shooter. Our free-throw percentage is actually going up, but it still needs improvement.”

At the free throw line, Rutgers has made more than 60.9 percent of their shots. According to TeamRankings.com, the Lions have allowed an average of 19.8 attempted opponent free throws per game. Pikiell is licking his chops at his teams’ chance to get in their reps during a real game.

Even with the upcoming break and the anxiety his squad is building to play again, Pikiell wants to maintain the teams’ focus; take it one game at a time, consistent weight room attendance, and breaking down game film.

“We need to take less three. More post ups, more inside the paint shots, more free throw attempts. We have a tough schedule ahead of us, but we’re evolving. Our rotations are sometimes dictated by foul trouble, other times by plays we want to run. I’m hoping that as our guys start to get comfortable in the system, we’ll improve, especially against the higher competition we got coming up,” Pikiell said.