1/12/2021 basketball Edit

Rutgers Hoops isn't panicking yet after three straight losses

Chris Nalwasky • TheKnightReport

Beat Writer

The Rutgers men’s team has lost three straight games and four of five after starting the season with six wins in a row.

Its latest defeat against Ohio State for a second time this season consisted of everything that has gone wrong for the Scarlet Knights (7-4, 3-4 Big Ten): the inability to rebound, get stops on defense, and make free throws.

Senior Jacob Young, who netted 19 points to lead the team, said after the game there’s no need to panic.

“We're good. It's nothing to stress about,” said Young, who has scored in double fi.gures in 10 straight games. “Just a couple of games. Everybody is going crazy. We'll bounce back.”

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But in order for the losses not to rack up more and more, Rutgers will have to get healthy, rebound, play better defense, and score more efficiently.

“We have to play harder,” said Caleb McConnell, who scored 12 points in his third game back from injury. “I feel like once we play hard, teams can’t compete with us. We have to do a good job of rebounding and get back to playing Rutgers basketball. If we play harder, teams really can’t compete with us. That’s going to be a big emphasis.”

Young chalked it up to just being in a slump and that the team will right the ship soon.

“We have to come together. The season that we were having at the beginning, it'll come back,” Young said. “We're in a slump right now. We have a week off and we'll come back ready.”

Pikiell knows his team hasn’t lived up to its ranking in recent days, but he’s confident like his players that they’ll all be OK.

“Tough stretch playing really good basketball teams, most of them are ranked,” Pikiell said. “You're gonna have win streaks and losing streaks and you've got to be really good. It’s easy when you are winning, you got to be good when you're not and you've got to keep your team right on track and these guys are good players and they're tough kids."

Rutgers has until Friday to get rest, healthier, and improve before it takes on Wisconsin at the RAC at 7:00 p.m.

“[We have to] start lifting each other up and trusting each other more. I feel like at the beginning we trusted each other more, but we just got to take the right approach and be on the same page,” Young said.

“I mean, I just want us to come together. I've been around for a little bit. It's not my first rodeo with losing three games in a row. We just got to come together like I keep saying and just bounce back. It's gonna click again.”