Rutgers surrenders late lead to Houston, capping a bad day for the Big Ten
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INDIANAPOLIS – Rutgers carried the Big Ten’s flag for much of Sunday evening against No. 2 Houston, perhaps surprisingly when you consider the Scarlet Knights were playing their first Round of 32 game since 1983.
But the Big Ten’s bad day somehow got even worse as an upset slipped away from the No. 10-seeded Scarlet Knights.
First, No. 1 Illinois was dethroned by No. 8 Loyola, and that was followed by No. 9 Wisconsin losing to top-seeded Baylor. Rutgers, however, appeared as if it would be the conference’s first school to punch a ticket to the Sweet 16.
It led by nine points with less than five minutes to play and was poised to go 2-0 this weekend, its first NCAA tournament appearance in 30 years. The Knights were suffocating defensively against a long, athletic Houston squad.
They had the game put away. Then they gave it away.
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“You know, we just came up a couple of plays short,” Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell said. “That’s all it takes. The margin of winning and losing in this tournament is a box-out here or a free throw. It comes down to some little things. They did those and we didn’t.”
Houston survived with a 63-60 victory, finishing on a 14-2 run, including the game’s final seven points to overcome its deficit. Rutgers’ Ron Harper Jr. missed what could’ve been a game-winning 3-pointer with three seconds left.
The Knights still haven’t made the Sweet 16 since 1976.
So, Sunday ultimately was an 0-for-3 day for the Big Ten, following previous exits from Ohio State, Purdue and Michigan State.
“I think we beat each other up over the course of 22, 23, 24 games – whatever teams ended up playing through the Big Ten tournament,” Pikiell said. “This league is great. It was great all year, and we beat each other up. Maybe that factored into this tournament, but we had our chances, too, today.”
The onus is now on No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 Iowa and No. 10 Maryland to represent the conference that led all with nine bids into the tournament and was rated as the best in Division I this season.
The tournament’s first three days – plus Michigan State’s loss in the First Four – have not featured hallmark moments for a conference that boasted multiple Final Four candidates on Selection Sunday.
“This league will always continue to be good,” he continued. “We had nine bids and I think we would’ve had nine last year. It’s hard to get into this tournament and when you get nine bids, it says a lot about the conference.”
Rutgers’ bad day didn’t end there.
Joe Boylan, the radio color analyst for Rutgers basketball and a beloved figure in the university’s athletic department, died hours before the game. He was 82 and had suffered a stroke on Wednesday night.
The Knights didn’t get the news until after their loss, an unfair double whammy.
“Not only was today’s loss real tough, but losing coach Boylan was just… yeah, real tough,” Pikiell said. “I thought we played our hearts out. This team made history. They now become the standard for what we want to be at Rutgers.”
Rutgers won 21 Big Ten games over the past two seasons after winning 16 combined in its first five years as a league member. It has posted back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1990-91 and 1991-92.
Senior Geo Baker stepped up as an activist for all NCAA athletes this week, too, as he got the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty trending to underscore their concern that the NCAA often treats them more like dollar signs rather than people.
“There’s a lot of emotion,” Baker said. “We’ve been through so much this year and if you weren’t inside, you couldn’t understand it. From isolating to wins and losses to being here in March. A lot of us were trying to go to March Madness last year and didn’t get that chance, so to lose like that was tough.”
Monday is a new day for the Big Ten.
Surely the remaining three schools hope for better outcomes than Illinois, Wisconsin and Rutgers.
“I don’t know if I’m ever really going to forget today or get over it, but there are better days ahead,” Baker said. “You just have to understand that, work through it and continue on.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Rutgers surrenders late lead to Houston, capping a bad day for the Big Ten