Piscataway, NJ—The Rutgers Scarlet Knights played the Iowa Hawkeyes on Wednesday night and suffered another conference loss, 84-73.
It was a tale of two halves for the Scarlet Knights. After a great start to the game, they finished the first half strong and led by nine points. However, the second half was terrible for the Scarlet Knights; they were outscored by 20 points.
Iowa did a great job on defense in the second half, limiting Rutgers to 31 points while forcing them to shoot under 20 percent from 3-point land and just 42 percent from the field.
Iowa head coach Fran McCaffrey spoke on his team’s impressive performance in the second half.
“We were locked in… both on offense and defense in the second half, really proud of that, especially when you’re on the road against a good team, you gotta stay connected,” said coach McCaffrey.
It seemed that Iowa’s game plan was to prevent Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey from having a big game. The pair finished the game combining for only 24 points.
“We were locked in to those guys… we made sure that either of them didn’t see a lot of daylight,” said Coach McCaffrey.
A big part of Iowa’s winning this game was not their shooting, as they shot 28 percent from the 3-point line, but the Hawkeyes’ control of the paint. Rutgers gave up 44 points in the paint, were out-rebounded 34 to 30, and allowed 11 offensive boards.
After the game, Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell spoke on the loss and blamed himself and his lack of preparation as one of the factors that led to the loss.
“In the second half, we were trying to defend 3-point land and giving up the lanes… we have to do a better job not letting our offense affect our defense… It’s on me 100 percent. I didn’t have these guys where they needed to be defensively for a game like this,” said coach Pikiell.
After this loss, it will take a lot for the Scarlet Knights to find themselves in the NCAA, but it’s still possible. Rutgers has six games remaining, four of them on the road, and they have a tall task ahead of them.
Coach Pikiell seems to believe in his guys’ ability to run the table and have a chance at the NCAA tournament.
“Six games left, there’s a lot of basketball to play… were going to keep grinding that’s what we’ve always done here, every year it’s something stacked against us and we’ve always figured out a way, we have to figure out a way this year,” said coach Pikiell.
