Rutgers men's basketball prepares for home matchup against Maryland
The Rutgers men’s basketball team returns home on Tuesday to take on Maryland in a Big Ten contest. The Scarlet Knights (11-7, 5-3) will look to sweep the season series over the Terrapins (10-9, 2-6) and secure their second win over the program in 10 days.
Rutgers enters Tuesday’s matchup off a close 68-65 loss to Minnesota on Saturday. Despite missing three starters, the Golden Gophers (11-5, 2-5) rode the hot-hand of Payton Willis to an upset victory. Willis finished with a career-high 32 points and eight three-pointers. No starter for Minnesota in Saturday’s game played less than 37 minutes.
In the losing effort, senior guard Geo Baker poured in 25 points and connected on seven three-pointers while senior guard Ron Harper Jr. was the next leading scorer with 12 points.
“(Willis) has been really good all year long…” said head coach Steve Pikiell after the game. “He just made some really difficult shots, he really did. To his credit, I thought we did as good a job guarding him as we could.”
With 12 games remaining, Harper stands as the Knights’ leading scorer with 16.3 points-per-game (PPG). The senior has reached the 30-point mark twice so far this season, with one being the recent win over Maryland where he scored a career-high 31 points. Harper is also shooting a career-best 45.7 percent from beyond the three-point line this season.
Baker and sophomore center Clifford Omoruyi also average double-digit PPG. In addition to their scoring, Omoruyi ranks inside the top 10 in the conference in rebounds-per-game (RPG) while Baker has a conference-best 2.9 assist-to-turnover ratio.
The high marks do not stop with Harper, Baker and Omoruyi. Junior guard Paul Mulcahy, the team-leader in assists-per-game is fourth in the Big Ten in the category. Meanwhile, senior guard Caleb McConnell has made a serious case for Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, as he leads the conference with 2.1 steals-per-game.
Circling back to Rutgers’ win over the Terrapins earlier this month, the program battled back from a double-digit halftime deficit to secure its first and only road win up to this point. Mulcahy supplemented Harper’s career day by scoring 15 points while Omoruyi grabbed 10 rebounds.
“(Mulcahy) had as good of a second half as you could have. But everybody that was at the game, everyone chipped in and made plays for us, and we needed all of them,” Pikiell said after the win. “We had great energy and fought the whole time, and I'm just pleased.”
On the opposite side, Maryland is coming into Tuesday’s game off its highest-ranked victory this season, defeating then-ranked No. 17 Illinois 81-65 last week. Donta Scott, the Terrapins' second-leading scorer this season, led the way with a career-high 25 points in the win. Eric Ayala is the team’s leading scorer with 15.9 PPG while Scott leads on the boards with 6.7 RPG.
The game will tip off at 8 p.m. and will be broadcasted on the Big Ten Network and 88.7 WRSU-FM. It will be the ninth sell-out of Jersey Mike’s Arena on Livingston Campus so far this season.
“There’s a lot of basketball left in the season with a lot of teams in our spot…” Pikiell said. “We got two days to prepare for a Maryland team that just beat Illinois, a ranked team. We got to play better, we’ve got to defend better, and I have confidence in our guys that we will.”
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