Rutgers students, players and more show up to watch Cliff Omoruyi
As announced via his Twitter page, four-star recruit out of Roselle Catholic High School Cliff Omoruyi is set to make his decision on where he wants to play college basketball “soon.” Standing at 6-foot-10 and weighing 230 lbs., the Roselle Catholic standout is ranked 36 nationally on rivals.com.
Back on Jan. 13, Omoruyi announced via his Twitter page that the five schools he had boiled his decision down to were Arizona State, Auburn, Rutgers, UConn, and Kentucky.
Playing in the Union County Tournament Final on Saturday, Feb. 29, it was a rough night for Omoruyi as he scored just 3 points, pulled down 11 rebounds, and recorded 3 blocks en route to his squad’s defeat to The Patrick School by a final score of 56-42. However, Omoruyi got a taste of how much Rutgers wants to lure him to Piscataway as the entire men’s basketball team and coaching staff as well as a number of Scarlet Knights fans made the trip to Harwood Arena at Kean University in order to cheer on the class of 2020 prospect.
“All there is to say is Cliff received a lot of offers from other great schools but we want him at Rutgers to take the program forward and to represent the state of New Jersey at Rutgers,” Riot Squad member and junior at Rutgers Mert Ibis said prior to the game. “We’re going to show him all the support at his game so that he knows how much Rutgers fans care about him.”
Along with Ibis, fellow Riot Squad member Andrew Galvach also made the trip to Kean in order to see Omorouyi play.
“As soon as we found out Roselle Catholic advanced and were going to play at Kean it was a no-brainer to have some of us go there and support Cliff while representing Rutgers,” Galvach said. “He’s an athletic freak who seems to be a perfect fit for the mold of the program right now and he has a chance to join a young core of guys right now.”
While Harwood Arena does not present the same qualities as the RAC, Galvach was proud to see the amount of support that the Rutgers faithful were willing to show towards Omoruyi.
“It was great seeing scarlet scattered around the arena,” the sophomore from Woodbridge said. “The players and coaches were all there to let Cliff know that we’re a legit fanbase and Rutgers is continuing to grow and we’re here to stay.”
The love for Omoruyi was felt as early as the announcement of Roselle Catholic’s starting line-up when members of the Rutgers section broke out into a “We Want Cliff” chant, similar to back on Jan. 15 when the same thing happened in the Scarlet Knights’ defeat of Indiana by a final score of 59-50 at the RAC.
“We heard that Roselle Catholic moved on to the Union County finals and we saw it was at Kean so we almost immediately decided that we should go and support Cliff,” Rutgers sophomore Ryan O’Connor said. “We started to get the word out and then we heard some of the players were going to go also and at that point we knew that we were going to make an impact.”
While it was a tough night for Omouyi in the scoring department, O’Connor saw a number of positives in the big man’s game that he thinks would serve Rutgers well if he decided to take his talents to Piscataway.
“Watching Cliff play for the first time I definitely saw his strengths with defense and rebounding. He played a really tough team in The Patrick School and I think his presence really impacted the game because they gave him special attention to limit his offensive production,” the Freehold native said. “Overall, I think he would be a great fit for Rutgers and it was great to see more of him than just his highlights and it was great to show him that we really want him on the banks.”
Coming off of an official visit to Piscataway over the weekend that began on Friday, Feb. 28., Omoruyi would be poised to step onto the court and make an immediate impact for the Scarlet Knights if he chooses to play at Rutgers with current big man Shaq Carter set to graduate.
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