Race to last place: Rutgers men's basketball faces fellow Big Ten bottom-feeder Michigan
The Rutgers men's basketball team will face Michigan on Saturday at the Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The contest will be a battle between the Big Ten's bottom two teams.
Two teams, who are often in the thick of the Big Ten standings when they meet, will now face off as No. 13 and No. 14 in the conference.
The Scarlet Knights (10-10, 2-7) are reeling after a home loss against Penn State, another lowly team in the conference. To avoid plummeting any further, Rutgers needs a win over the languishing Wolverines (7-14, 2-8).
The Knights have never won at the Crisler Center and are 2-12 against Michigan all-time. Rutgers has won 2 of the last 4 matchups against the Wolverines, though, including a Big Ten Tournament win last season.
The Knights' performance against the Nittany Lions (10-11, 4-6) on Wednesday is about as bad as it gets. Rutgers shot 17-50 from the field, 1-17 from three-point range and 11-22 from the charity stripe. While there were not many positives from the game, freshmen guards Gavin Griffiths and Jamichael Davis played well.
Griffiths finished as the Knights' leading scorer with 11 points on 5-9 shooting. He also knocked down his team's lone three-pointer. Davis was right behind Griffiths with 10 points. Davis also had active hands on the defensive end, tallying two steals and a block.
Rutgers' expectations for this season have changed as the season has progressed. No longer looking like a possible NCAA Tournament team, expect head coach Steve Pikiell to get his younger players like Griffiths and Davis more run moving forward. A good opportunity for this philosophy to begin is Saturday's contest with Michigan.
The matchup between the Knights and the Wolverines will be an interesting one. Rutgers comes in with the worst scoring offense in the Big Ten, by a wide margin, while holding the No. 3 defense. Similarly to the bout against Penn State, the Knights' opponent is quite the opposite of themselves.
Michigan is the conference's bottom-ranked defense, but the Wolverines boast a high-scoring offense. Michigan's scoring may be inflated, though, as it is often behind in games and is forced to pick up the pace and shoot as many shots as possible to stay in games.
Throughout all their games, the Wolverines' shot selection is questionable, and Rutgers will need to stifle them defensively to contribute to this even further.
The Knights will need bounce-back performances from essentially the whole roster, but it will be intriguing to see the potential progression from Griffiths and Davis following a game, in which they carried most of the load.
Saturday's game will tip off at 4 p.m. and will be broadcast on Big Ten Network and 88.7 WRSU-FM.
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