3/11/2022 basketball Edit

Rutgers Men's Basketball now awaits Selection Sunday

Chris Nalwasky • TheKnightReport

Beat Writer

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There's about 49 hours from the time Rutgers' Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals post game press conference wrapped about just before 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday to the time NCAA Tournament bracket is revealed starting at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday night.

Those 49 hours might as well be 49 years.

The Scarlet Knights are going to likely have to sweat out Selection Sunday after their loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Wins are on Rutgers' side. It finished in fourth place in one of the top conferences in college basketball, and it notched six Quad 1 victories including against ranked teams in then-No. 1 Purdue, then-No. 13 Michigan State, then-No 16 Ohio State, then-No. 14 Wisconsin, and then-No. 12 Illinois.

Rutgers also won for the first time against Michigan, beat a Maryland team that ended up better at the end of the season, and won its last two games of the regular season over Indiana on the road and Penn State at home. The Hoosiers are now in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals.

"Man, if we're not in, I don't know what to tell you, man," Ron Harper Jr. said. "I feel like this team has proved itself, proved we've gotten better day in and day out. Every time we come off a tough loss, we always bounce back. So this team definitely deserves to play in March. We're a great team and I feel like we can make a lot of noise in March. We're just going to hope the selection committee sees us through, but we feel like we should definitely be playing."

On the flip side, the metrics aren't too kind to the Scarlet Knights. They entered the day ranked 77th per the NET and 75th on KenPom. No team has made the Big Dance with a NET that low. Michigan State and St. John's saw its name get called in recent years, but they were higher up in the 70s.

Friday morning, Bracketmatrix had Rutgers in the NCAA Tournament as an average No. 12 seed in 99 projections.

Iowa coach Fran McCaffrey, like Illinois coach Brad Underwood said in February, said the Scarlet Knights pass the eyeball test and should be in the tournament.

"You know, I'm kind of baffled by the question. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. To me, it's a no-brainer. That's an NCAA Tournament team," McCaffrey said. "The wins that they had this year, the wins they had on the road with the talent that they have, you know, I think sometimes you look at metrics, but sometimes, you know, like we say, you have the eyeball test. You look at that team and it's an NCAA Tournament team, and that's what they are."

Rutgers appears to be in, and it most likely wouldn't be a question if it didn't fall to UMass and Lafayette in November. But it did, even if those contests were eons ago.

"We finished top 4 in the Big Ten, and beat other teams that are going to make it, too," Geo Baker said, so I feel like we're in a good position."

After the roller coaster season, Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell believes the nation will see Rutgers pop up on the screen. After all, he always says the Big Ten is the best league in the country, and Rutgers won 12 games within the conference this winter.

Right now, Bart Torvik's Teamcast has Rutgers not in the

"I can't be any more confident," Pikiell said. "I think we'd win games, too. So if you play in this league, I don't know if people realize this league, every single game, all the ranked teams, and the teams that aren't ranked, are only not ranked because they're losing to ranked teams. The gauntlet of this league and what our guys had to do and play through, and I think we're playing well, too, at this time of the year. You know, we get that great opportunity and if we do, we'll take advantage of it."