Rutgers is sitting on a two-game win streak at home and next welcomes Michigan into the RAC. Winners of three of their last four, with Ohio State snapping their three-game win streak in Columbus, Rutgers suddenly looks like a dangerous team, especially at home. Michigan hopes to avoid a let-down trap game against the Scarlet Knights on Tuesday evening.
Rutgers -- An Overview:
Since they have joined the Big Ten, the Scarlet Knights have always been an afterthought. That started to change last season when they topped a #15 Seton Hall team off at home as well as Wisconsin, and then beat Minnesota and Indiana in front of a (near) hometown crowd at Madison Square Garden. Having never topped 3-15 in the conference, Rutgers currently sits 4-7 in the Big Ten and 11-10 overall. Steve Pikiell has done wonders in turning around this stagnant Rutgers program, and this season they have once again shocked a ranked team at home, #16 Ohio State early in the season, along with victories over Indiana, Nebraska, and one in Miami, Florida, during the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Despite no Corey Sanders, who left a season early for professional basketball, Rutgers has kept on trucking and will hope to stay above .500 with not just a season-defining, but a program-defining victory under a coach that has plenty of excitement around it.
Starting Five:
The no-doubt leader of the squad is 6'4" sophomore guard Geo Baker. A bit of a second option with Corey Sanders running the show last season, Baker is now the point guard and things will run through him on every possession. Last season, he led the team in threes made with 53 along with leading Big Ten freshmen with minutes played (31.6 per game). The increased role has seen a dip in efficiency, but looking simply at raw stats, he has improved in a pair of key categories. He is up from 10.8 to 13.2 points per game while the assists are up from 2.6 to four per game. Baker is already sitting at 45 made threes and sits just about the same, up just 0.2% from last season till now. His percentage overall has dropped from 38% last season to 35.8%, but that drop could also result from him shooting 2.5 more shots per game in a minutes-per-game average 34.3, tied with Carsen Edwards for second in the conference. He also has three games with twenty points this season as well. As just a sophomore, the fact that Baker is already taking such a heavy role within the offense is a positive sign for Rutgers. He likely has at least one more season, likely two unless he does what Sanders did last season, and is the most important player on the court for Rutgers as a player.
Team captain Eugene Omoruyi is a junior and went under the radar to start the season, but the forward has been essential to the success this season of the Scarlet Knights. Incredibly consistent, Omoruyi leads the Knights in scoring with 14.2 points per game along with 7.4 rebounds, also a team-high. Omoruyi, in non-injury shortened games, has a season-low of eight, and just one other game of single-digit scoring. His leap from freshman to sophomore season had Pikiell dub him the most improved player from his first to second seasons as head coach in New Jersey, but this jump from sophomore to junior year has been even more impressive. A 6'7" junior, Omoruyi is athletic enough to guard smaller wings, but big enough to take on stronger power forwards. Additionally, having gone zero-for-sixteen from three in his first two seasons, this season he is 12-for-36 (33.3%) from three this season. His shot numbers have gone up from 6.4 to 11.5 attempts per game. He is also the runaway leader in PORPAGATU! on this Rutgers side with a rating of 2.8, nearly a full point higher than Baker's 1.9 rating. With six double-doubles, and a seasonal top performance of twenty points and seventeen rebounds against Boston, Omoruyi is one of the quietly-effective players within the conference.
Blossoming into an important starter for Rutgers is freshman Ron Harper Jr. A 6'6" wing, and son of five-time NBA Champion with the Chicago Bulls and sixteen year veteran, his son has been able to carve a serious role out for him within the team dynamic of the Scarlet Knights. Possessing a 7'2" wing-span, Harper has earned a starting spot for good starting with the team's win at home over Ohio State, and since then he has shot 38.5% from three since becoming a starter -- over the last eight games -- with an average of seven points per game. His wing span also makes him a plus-defender, as emphasized by his shut down job against Indiana's Romeo Langford. He has tons of upside, especially being just a freshman, but some of the stats still need improvement as a whole. He is shooting just 25.8% from three on the season and 35.4% as a whole. He is averaging 6.3 points a game as well, and the hope is certainly that that number can improving with his improving shooting as a starter. His intangibles make him an immediate threat as a freshman, but as he develops under this coaching staff, he could easily turn into one of the most underrated players in Big Ten if he makes a leap like Omoruyi did from freshman to sophomore seasons.
Another freshman, Montez Mathis is a 6'4" guard who has seen his best performances this season start with the new year. Mathis is the third-highest scorer on the team, averaging 8.1 points per game to go along with three rebounds. He is athletic and a pure scorer, but that will need to be fleshed out at this level. As of late, especially with Omoruyi out, he has been able to turn it on. Over the four game stretch against Purdue, Northwestern, Nebraska, and Penn State, in which Omoruyi was out for the first two and coming off the bench in the other two, he averaged 16.5 points and 5.3 rebounds per game on 40% shooting from three and 42.3% shooting overall. That said, the last two games have seen him go just three-for-sixteen with a combined eight points. Not yet a threat from three, it is right now about beating players to the rim off the bounce, as he showcased against his hometown Maryland Terps earlier this season against much bigger opponents. The key to him is obviously limiting his drive. He can step out and shoot the three, but with his role in the offense while both Baker and Omoruyi are healthy, that is not what he is asked to do and his 25.6% mark over the season corroborates that.
Rounding out the starting five is the only player who has started all 21 games of this season. Shaquille Doorson is the lone senior on the team and the 7'0" center is the key source of height for the Knights. Despite the starting role, Doorson is averaging only 17.8 minutes per game. His stats have all improved from his junior to senior seasons: his points per game are up from 1.8 to 3.6 per game, rebounds are up from 2.9 to 4.7 per game, he is now up to just over a block per game, and his shooting percentage remains high at 62.7%. That said, he is only shooting 36.4% from the free throw line, making shooting fouls on him not too bad at all. A hard worker and fellow captain, Doorson is a team leader, aided largely by being the aforementioned lone senior on the squad this season. He may not play the biggest role, but when he is in the game for extended periods of time, his rebounding and high field goal percentage make him a post threat to keep a constant eye on.
Bench Rundown:
Rutgers goes fairly deep in their bench, only emphasized more by the fact that junior wing Issa Thiam has registered a pair of DNPs and just five minutes against Ohio State in the last three games. As of late, Caleb McConnell has been the top minute-getter off the bench. A 6'6" freshman guard, McConnell has seen 42 minutes of play in the last two games after averaging under seven minutes per game in the first ten of the season. The guard is coming off his best game of the season with fourteen points on 50% shooting, including three-for-six shooting from three. His last eleven have seen him shoot almost 39% on 5.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game. An athletic guard, McConnell can get the the rim but has, especially lately, not shied away from the long range shot. Additionally, he can serve as the back-up point guard and allow Geo Baker more freedom in getting shots off the pass by playing the off guard. A good defender and hard worker, McConnell has grown into the season and continues to do well in his development for the years to come.
Another key piece to the puzzle is sophomore transfer Peter Kiss. The 6'5" guard moved from Quinnipiac after a season that saw him second on the team in scoring with the Bobcats as just a freshman. Starting the year as a starter, the Scarlet Knights' fourth-leading scorer averages 7.4 points per game on improved threes from his freshman season at Quinnipiac, jumping from 27.7% to 31.6%. Lately, however, Kiss has been struggling to find his range as since a breakout game off the bench against Seton Hall, his first as a sixth-man, he has shot just 25% from three and 35.7% overall, averaging 4.6 points per game only. He has seen his role in the offense fade a bit as well as in that stretch of ten games, even including two starts, he shot the ball more than five times in a game once, a six-attempt night vs. Maine. The drop-off mirrors Issa Thiam, who since the start of December has only shot 18.2% and made just six field goals in that time, despite spending 33 of 34 games last season as a starter. The hope is that Kiss can get back going and offer another guard scoring threat like he had earlier in the season.
Freshman center Myles Johnson is the first big off the bench and has seen action in every game this season. 6'10" and, in fact, a redshirt freshman, he actually even has better numbers than Shaquille Doorson in some key areas. The year in the program has done him well as on the season he is averaging four points and 5.3 rebounds with 52.2% shooting. Johnson impressively has just ten fewer offensive than defensive rebounds. He's had two double-doubles this season, most recently tallying thirteen points and eleven rebounds against Nebraska. He is a vital bench piece that is seeing a huge uptick in minutes. Since, and including, his first double-double against Maine this season, he is shooting 60%. Not at all a threat from three, Johnson will crash the boards instead and it is essential for Jon Teske to box him out at all times when he is on the court.
The final man off the bench usually is Shaq Carter. Yet another new member to the team, Carter is a 6'9" junior college transfer from Eastern Florida State that has seen his minutes increase like McConnell as the season got deeper. Carter's top game of the season was a thirteen point, six-for-seven shooting, six rebound night against Columbia in his first appearance as a starter. A starter for a five-game stretch during Big Ten play, he averaged 26.2 minutes, 6.2 points, 6.6 rebounds, and shot a little over 57% from the field. These are increases of his 5.6 point, 4.4 rebound averages over the season as a whole. His PORPAGATU! is 1.8, the third-highest on the team, and serves to highlight his importance as a bench piece. He has come off the bench the past two games and seen a drop in minutes, but he will still be charged with playing some important minutes inside. He can play a bigger four, especially if added interior defense is needed, or a smaller five. The options are there for Steve Pikiell.
Pre-Game Thoughts:
Rutgers has become a sneaky team that will catch, and already have caught, teams by surprise as a result of overlooking them. Michigan needs to make sure that, especially coming off a road loss, that this does not happen again. I think that, like many teams, this is a Rutgers side that is a solid match-up for Michigan. Something I harp over and over again in these previews is that you need multiple scorers that are versatile to beat Michigan. To do so, these cannot just be a scoring guard and a wing. A team like Iowa had two solid bigs, a strong wing, and multiple bigs to rotate in to score on Michigan as the Wolverines' bigs got into scoring trouble. Looking at Rutgers, Geo Baker is a scoring point guard, Eugene Omoruyi is a wing, and there is a lack of wing scoring aside from that. Rutgers can rotate bigs in, but with only one center with at least one full season of division one basketball under their belt, the question is if it will be enough for Rutgers to slow Jon Teske on offense or trouble him on defense. I fancy Michigan, but this is certainly not going to be as straightforward as I may seem to be implying. It will take a strong effort all around against heart-filled Rutgers side.
Follow me on Twitter @RMAB_Ryan for plenty more Michigan basketball coverage, as well as AFC Ann Arbor and Liverpool FC coverage as well!
Rutgers -- An Overview:
Since they have joined the Big Ten, the Scarlet Knights have always been an afterthought. That started to change last season when they topped a #15 Seton Hall team off at home as well as Wisconsin, and then beat Minnesota and Indiana in front of a (near) hometown crowd at Madison Square Garden. Having never topped 3-15 in the conference, Rutgers currently sits 4-7 in the Big Ten and 11-10 overall. Steve Pikiell has done wonders in turning around this stagnant Rutgers program, and this season they have once again shocked a ranked team at home, #16 Ohio State early in the season, along with victories over Indiana, Nebraska, and one in Miami, Florida, during the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Despite no Corey Sanders, who left a season early for professional basketball, Rutgers has kept on trucking and will hope to stay above .500 with not just a season-defining, but a program-defining victory under a coach that has plenty of excitement around it.
Starting Five:
The no-doubt leader of the squad is 6'4" sophomore guard Geo Baker. A bit of a second option with Corey Sanders running the show last season, Baker is now the point guard and things will run through him on every possession. Last season, he led the team in threes made with 53 along with leading Big Ten freshmen with minutes played (31.6 per game). The increased role has seen a dip in efficiency, but looking simply at raw stats, he has improved in a pair of key categories. He is up from 10.8 to 13.2 points per game while the assists are up from 2.6 to four per game. Baker is already sitting at 45 made threes and sits just about the same, up just 0.2% from last season till now. His percentage overall has dropped from 38% last season to 35.8%, but that drop could also result from him shooting 2.5 more shots per game in a minutes-per-game average 34.3, tied with Carsen Edwards for second in the conference. He also has three games with twenty points this season as well. As just a sophomore, the fact that Baker is already taking such a heavy role within the offense is a positive sign for Rutgers. He likely has at least one more season, likely two unless he does what Sanders did last season, and is the most important player on the court for Rutgers as a player.
Team captain Eugene Omoruyi is a junior and went under the radar to start the season, but the forward has been essential to the success this season of the Scarlet Knights. Incredibly consistent, Omoruyi leads the Knights in scoring with 14.2 points per game along with 7.4 rebounds, also a team-high. Omoruyi, in non-injury shortened games, has a season-low of eight, and just one other game of single-digit scoring. His leap from freshman to sophomore season had Pikiell dub him the most improved player from his first to second seasons as head coach in New Jersey, but this jump from sophomore to junior year has been even more impressive. A 6'7" junior, Omoruyi is athletic enough to guard smaller wings, but big enough to take on stronger power forwards. Additionally, having gone zero-for-sixteen from three in his first two seasons, this season he is 12-for-36 (33.3%) from three this season. His shot numbers have gone up from 6.4 to 11.5 attempts per game. He is also the runaway leader in PORPAGATU! on this Rutgers side with a rating of 2.8, nearly a full point higher than Baker's 1.9 rating. With six double-doubles, and a seasonal top performance of twenty points and seventeen rebounds against Boston, Omoruyi is one of the quietly-effective players within the conference.
Blossoming into an important starter for Rutgers is freshman Ron Harper Jr. A 6'6" wing, and son of five-time NBA Champion with the Chicago Bulls and sixteen year veteran, his son has been able to carve a serious role out for him within the team dynamic of the Scarlet Knights. Possessing a 7'2" wing-span, Harper has earned a starting spot for good starting with the team's win at home over Ohio State, and since then he has shot 38.5% from three since becoming a starter -- over the last eight games -- with an average of seven points per game. His wing span also makes him a plus-defender, as emphasized by his shut down job against Indiana's Romeo Langford. He has tons of upside, especially being just a freshman, but some of the stats still need improvement as a whole. He is shooting just 25.8% from three on the season and 35.4% as a whole. He is averaging 6.3 points a game as well, and the hope is certainly that that number can improving with his improving shooting as a starter. His intangibles make him an immediate threat as a freshman, but as he develops under this coaching staff, he could easily turn into one of the most underrated players in Big Ten if he makes a leap like Omoruyi did from freshman to sophomore seasons.
Another freshman, Montez Mathis is a 6'4" guard who has seen his best performances this season start with the new year. Mathis is the third-highest scorer on the team, averaging 8.1 points per game to go along with three rebounds. He is athletic and a pure scorer, but that will need to be fleshed out at this level. As of late, especially with Omoruyi out, he has been able to turn it on. Over the four game stretch against Purdue, Northwestern, Nebraska, and Penn State, in which Omoruyi was out for the first two and coming off the bench in the other two, he averaged 16.5 points and 5.3 rebounds per game on 40% shooting from three and 42.3% shooting overall. That said, the last two games have seen him go just three-for-sixteen with a combined eight points. Not yet a threat from three, it is right now about beating players to the rim off the bounce, as he showcased against his hometown Maryland Terps earlier this season against much bigger opponents. The key to him is obviously limiting his drive. He can step out and shoot the three, but with his role in the offense while both Baker and Omoruyi are healthy, that is not what he is asked to do and his 25.6% mark over the season corroborates that.
Rounding out the starting five is the only player who has started all 21 games of this season. Shaquille Doorson is the lone senior on the team and the 7'0" center is the key source of height for the Knights. Despite the starting role, Doorson is averaging only 17.8 minutes per game. His stats have all improved from his junior to senior seasons: his points per game are up from 1.8 to 3.6 per game, rebounds are up from 2.9 to 4.7 per game, he is now up to just over a block per game, and his shooting percentage remains high at 62.7%. That said, he is only shooting 36.4% from the free throw line, making shooting fouls on him not too bad at all. A hard worker and fellow captain, Doorson is a team leader, aided largely by being the aforementioned lone senior on the squad this season. He may not play the biggest role, but when he is in the game for extended periods of time, his rebounding and high field goal percentage make him a post threat to keep a constant eye on.
Bench Rundown:
Rutgers goes fairly deep in their bench, only emphasized more by the fact that junior wing Issa Thiam has registered a pair of DNPs and just five minutes against Ohio State in the last three games. As of late, Caleb McConnell has been the top minute-getter off the bench. A 6'6" freshman guard, McConnell has seen 42 minutes of play in the last two games after averaging under seven minutes per game in the first ten of the season. The guard is coming off his best game of the season with fourteen points on 50% shooting, including three-for-six shooting from three. His last eleven have seen him shoot almost 39% on 5.8 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game. An athletic guard, McConnell can get the the rim but has, especially lately, not shied away from the long range shot. Additionally, he can serve as the back-up point guard and allow Geo Baker more freedom in getting shots off the pass by playing the off guard. A good defender and hard worker, McConnell has grown into the season and continues to do well in his development for the years to come.
Another key piece to the puzzle is sophomore transfer Peter Kiss. The 6'5" guard moved from Quinnipiac after a season that saw him second on the team in scoring with the Bobcats as just a freshman. Starting the year as a starter, the Scarlet Knights' fourth-leading scorer averages 7.4 points per game on improved threes from his freshman season at Quinnipiac, jumping from 27.7% to 31.6%. Lately, however, Kiss has been struggling to find his range as since a breakout game off the bench against Seton Hall, his first as a sixth-man, he has shot just 25% from three and 35.7% overall, averaging 4.6 points per game only. He has seen his role in the offense fade a bit as well as in that stretch of ten games, even including two starts, he shot the ball more than five times in a game once, a six-attempt night vs. Maine. The drop-off mirrors Issa Thiam, who since the start of December has only shot 18.2% and made just six field goals in that time, despite spending 33 of 34 games last season as a starter. The hope is that Kiss can get back going and offer another guard scoring threat like he had earlier in the season.
Freshman center Myles Johnson is the first big off the bench and has seen action in every game this season. 6'10" and, in fact, a redshirt freshman, he actually even has better numbers than Shaquille Doorson in some key areas. The year in the program has done him well as on the season he is averaging four points and 5.3 rebounds with 52.2% shooting. Johnson impressively has just ten fewer offensive than defensive rebounds. He's had two double-doubles this season, most recently tallying thirteen points and eleven rebounds against Nebraska. He is a vital bench piece that is seeing a huge uptick in minutes. Since, and including, his first double-double against Maine this season, he is shooting 60%. Not at all a threat from three, Johnson will crash the boards instead and it is essential for Jon Teske to box him out at all times when he is on the court.
The final man off the bench usually is Shaq Carter. Yet another new member to the team, Carter is a 6'9" junior college transfer from Eastern Florida State that has seen his minutes increase like McConnell as the season got deeper. Carter's top game of the season was a thirteen point, six-for-seven shooting, six rebound night against Columbia in his first appearance as a starter. A starter for a five-game stretch during Big Ten play, he averaged 26.2 minutes, 6.2 points, 6.6 rebounds, and shot a little over 57% from the field. These are increases of his 5.6 point, 4.4 rebound averages over the season as a whole. His PORPAGATU! is 1.8, the third-highest on the team, and serves to highlight his importance as a bench piece. He has come off the bench the past two games and seen a drop in minutes, but he will still be charged with playing some important minutes inside. He can play a bigger four, especially if added interior defense is needed, or a smaller five. The options are there for Steve Pikiell.
Pre-Game Thoughts:
Rutgers has become a sneaky team that will catch, and already have caught, teams by surprise as a result of overlooking them. Michigan needs to make sure that, especially coming off a road loss, that this does not happen again. I think that, like many teams, this is a Rutgers side that is a solid match-up for Michigan. Something I harp over and over again in these previews is that you need multiple scorers that are versatile to beat Michigan. To do so, these cannot just be a scoring guard and a wing. A team like Iowa had two solid bigs, a strong wing, and multiple bigs to rotate in to score on Michigan as the Wolverines' bigs got into scoring trouble. Looking at Rutgers, Geo Baker is a scoring point guard, Eugene Omoruyi is a wing, and there is a lack of wing scoring aside from that. Rutgers can rotate bigs in, but with only one center with at least one full season of division one basketball under their belt, the question is if it will be enough for Rutgers to slow Jon Teske on offense or trouble him on defense. I fancy Michigan, but this is certainly not going to be as straightforward as I may seem to be implying. It will take a strong effort all around against heart-filled Rutgers side.
Follow me on Twitter @RMAB_Ryan for plenty more Michigan basketball coverage, as well as AFC Ann Arbor and Liverpool FC coverage as well!
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