Clemson men’s basketball falls to Rutgers in NCAA Tournament first round

CLEMSON — Clemson had relied all season on Aamir Simms, and with the team’s first-round NCAA Tournament game against Rutgers on the line March 19, the Tigers gave the ball to their leader.

Simms was then called for traveling, though, and a Scarlet Knights layup on the other end sealed No. 10-seed Rutgers’ 60-56 win over No. 7-seed Clemson at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. 

Rutgers on March 21 will play No. 2-seed Houston in the second round. Clemson will leave the tournament bubble and return home, left to diagnose what went wrong. 

The postmortem will likely start with the offense, which was too dependent on Simms at times. The forward scored a team-high 15 points in the loss, with guard Clyde Trapp adding 14 and forward Hunter Tyson 10.

But the team shot a combined 35.6 percent from the floor and 31.6 percent from long range. 

The game marked Rutgers’ first NCAA Tournament victory in 38 years.

Follow Joshua Needelman on Twitter at @joshneedelman.