Rutgers women's basketball ends season with 2nd-round loss against Indiana in Big Ten Tournament
After a big win over rival Penn State yesterday, the Rutgers women’s basketball team saw its season come to an end today with a loss to Indiana in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament. The Scarlet Knights (11-20, 3-14) ended the 2021-22 season strong, with 4 wins in their final 7 games of the year.
The first quarter was a back-and-forth affair, with the teams trading the lead multiple times. Rutgers kept it a one-possession game late into the first, but a buzzer-beating three from Ali Patberg gave the No. 14 Hoosiers (20-7, 11-5) a 6-point lead after 10 minutes.
The Knights started the second quarter on a 6-2 run, with two baskets from junior forward Tyia Singleton. They brought the game to within one possession with 4:41 remaining before Indiana responded with 7 unanswered points, ultimately keeping their 6-point lead at the halftime break.
After 20 minutes, graduate student guard Shug Dickson led with 8 points as Rutgers shot 38.7 percent as a team. Patberg had 9 points which all came on threes, and the Hoosiers overall were efficient from the free throw line, hitting 7 of their 9 attempts.
The Knights tried to come back a few times in the third and fourth quarters, but Indiana held strong to keep its lead for the entire 20 minutes en route to the victory. Patberg led all scorers with 19 points while Grace Berger, an All-Big Ten first team member this year, had 17 in addition to six rebounds and six assists.
Rutgers was led by graduate student forward Osh Brown, who posted 12 points and 10 rebounds for yet another double-double this season. Brown was the statistical leader on the Banks this season, pacing the program in both scoring and rebounding.
Acting head coach Timothy Eatman ends his first season at the helm of the program with no definitive answer about the future status of head coach C. Vivian Stringer. Despite a shaky start, the Knights finished as the best scoring defense in the Big Ten.
The roster is also changing for next season, as eight players were honored on Senior Night and will have to be replaced for the 2022-23 campaign. Rutgers could be an all new program, as was the case at the beginning of this year.
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