1/10/2021 basketball Edit

Three Thoughts on Rutgers Basketball's loss to Ohio State

Craig Epstein

Staff Writer

After a brutal showing against Michigan State, Rutgers followed it up with another poor performance against Ohio State as the Scarlet Knights were defeated 79-68 to drop their third in a row and four out of their last five. With the loss, Rutgers falls to a 7-4 record overall and 3-4 in the Big Ten.

Here are three thoughts after the game:

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An Unrecognizable Team

While the final score might read 79-68, this game was not really that close as Rutgers struggled mightily for the first 35 minutes of the game and were down by as much as 22 points at one point in the second half.

“They’re well coached, I thought they made some really difficult shots so tip of the hat to them,” Head Coach Steve Pikiell said in his postgame press conference. “I thought we kept grinding, even at the end I liked the last 11, 12 minutes, I thought that was Rutgers basketball and unfortunately you have to play 40 minutes in this league and we’ll get ourselves to that point.”

Right now this team looks like a completely different squad from the one that showed up early in the season and their body language shows it. Ron Harper Jr. is not taking over games as he had earlier in the year, Myles Johnson looks skittish on both ends of the floor, and Montez Mathis seems to get stuffed every team he drives the ball to the basket. Not to mention, Geo Baker does not look like the same player since coming back from his high ankle sprain and the defensive performances the last two games have been porous.

Where Has The Offense Gone?

While this offensive performance was a step up from the one against Michigan State, Rutgers still had trouble finding its rhythm as the Scarlet Knights went 29-66 from the field and shot 25 percent from the three-point line. Not only that, but they struggled from the free-throw line once again only hitting five of their 10 attempts.

“We got to continue to push the ball when we can, but a lot of that is about stops and we obviously, giving up 79 points tonight, didn’t have a lot of stops in the basketball game,” Pikiell continued. “Rebounding factors into how much you can run and teams know that we like to run so they are not going to let us get up and down the court the way we want.”

Rutgers also had trouble creating second-chance points as the Buckeyes beat them handily on the boards snatching down 34 defensive rebounds en route to out-rebounding the Scarlet Knights 43-29. This marks the fifth straight game that Rutgers has lost the rebounding battle which is a surprise for a Pikiell-led team.

Rutgers Faces Its First True Test

The measure of a team is not always how good they are when things are going well, but how they respond when things start going bad. With a week off until their next game against Wisconsin, Rutgers is going to have to figure some things out both offensively and defensively if they want to get over this roadblock.

“This is the league that we play in so playing great teams, we’ve got to get healthy, 100 percent healthy, but these guys are good guys,” Pikiell said. “We’ll keep working, that’s what we do. We get better, we improve, it’s six days to work on Wisconsin and you know we’re right in the league where you need to be.”

This week off will also give some much-needed rest to the banged-up Scarlet Knights who will look to get back to 100 percent sooner rather than later. While the sky has not yet fallen and there is still plenty of basketball left to be played, it will be interesting to see how Rutgers responds to their first true test of the season in order to try and get back to the team they were earlier in the year.

Rutgers will look to bounce back when they take on No. 8 Wisconsin next Friday at 7 p.m. at the RAC on FS1.