Smarting from a one-sided rivalry defeat, Rutgers enters a brief respite on its schedule before Big Ten play resumes as it hosts Penn on Saturday night in Piscataway, N.J.
Rutgers (5-6) has dropped six of its past seven games, a stretch that began with an upset at the hands of Central Connecticut State and featured blowout losses to Tennessee, Purdue and Michigan. Then came the annual game against Seton Hall last Saturday, which the host Pirates won 81-59.
Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell’s starting-lineup decisions that day mostly backfired. He reinserted Denis Badalau to the starting five, but the Romanian played only three minutes before being removed for good. Badalau has shot 19% from the field and 1-for-14 from long distance in the past six games.
The Scarlet Knights also started Tariq Francis at lead guard while bringing veteran Jamichael Davis off the bench. Francis lost three turnovers in a row to give Seton Hall a 6-0 head start and was promptly subbed out; Davis failed to score and lost five turnovers in 22 minutes.
If there’s one Rutgers player in good form, it’s Harun Zrno, whose best games have come against the best competition: 14 points against Tennessee, 13 vs. Purdue, 13 at Michigan and 15 at Seton Hall. He made multiple 3-pointers in each game.
“In all of our high-level games, he’s been able to produce for us,” Pikiell said. “We gotta start putting him in more stuff for him.”
Penn (6-4) has been off since holding on for a 74-72 win over Lafayette on Dec. 8. In the Quakers’ two games against Power 5 competition, they lost to Providence by 25 and to Villanova by 27.
“I think physically and athletically, we were outmatched a little bit,” forward TJ Power said after the Villanova game, per the Daily Pennsylvanian. “We have to make up for that with our intensity, guarding the ball, guarding ball screens.”
Rutgers won’t have to gameplan for Penn’s best player, Ethan Roberts, who collided with a Villanova player in a Dec. 6 game and was taken to the hospital. While the school hasn’t revealed the nature of his injury, a teammate told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Roberts is around the team, just not practicing yet.
Without Roberts (18.0 ppg), Power is the next man up with an average of 15.0 points and a team-high 7.6 rebounds per game.
Pikiell and Penn’s Fran McCaffery, formerly of Iowa, have coached against each other every year since Pikiell came to Rutgers in 2016. McCaffery’s Hawkeyes won their past five meetings with Rutgers.
–Field Level Media
