Rutgers finishes regular season with 6th loss in 7 games after blowout loss to Ohio State

By Sam Federman (@Sam_Federman)

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — When Rutgers woke up on February 16, it had won four games in a row to improve to 6-7 in the Big Ten, and Ohio State had just fallen to 4-10 in the league and fired its head coach two days prior.

Over the last three weeks and change, those scripts have completely flipped, as Rutgers finished the regular season with its sixth loss in seven games, by a score of 73-51 to the red-hot Buckeyes on Sunday.

The loss settled the Scarlet Knights into the No. 13 seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament, which takes place this week, from Wednesday through Sunday in Minneapolis. Rutgers will play on Wednesday night at 6:30 against the loser of tonight’s game between Maryland and Penn State.

“It’s a new season for everybody,” head coach Steve Pikiell said. “And it doesn’t matter where you have to play. You can go on a run. We’ve done it before, so you get a new opportunity.”

While a new season may be on the horizon, the same issues continued to plague the Scarlet Knights Sunday afternoon, shooting just 27.3 percent from the field. Ohio State opened the scoring on an 8-0 run, and the home team didn’t put in a field goal until Emmanuel Ogbole’s dunk after seven-and-a-half minutes had already passed.

Ogbole was only in the game because Cliff Omouryi picked up two fouls within the first three minutes of the game, putting Rutgers well behind the eight-ball. As the first half went along, the Scarlet Knights bridged the gap. Over the final six-plus minutes, after Omoruyi came back in the game, the hosts cut Ohio State’s lead from nine down to two.

Pikiell rode with Omoruyi despite him picking up his third foul just seconds into the second half until the 16-minute media timeout, and it’s easy to see why. As soon as he came out of the game, a three-point Ohio State lead stretched to 11, and Rutgers was never within single digits again.

“I thought missing shots affected our energy,” Pikiell said. “We fought back in the first half, but when we weren’t making free throws or layups in the second half, it affected us.”

After an Omoruyi layup in the first minute of the second half, the Scarlet Knights made just one for their next 14 attempts from the field, and it was compounded by free throw shooting struggles. Rutgers (15-16, 7-13 Big Ten) shot just 17-for-28 from the line, including an abysmal 9-of-18 in the second half. While this iteration of Rutgers will never be a good shooting team or even a good offensive team, it becomes non-competitive when the free throws aren’t falling.

“When you’re not scoring, you have to get to the free throw line,” Pikiell said. “And it kind of takes the air out of the balloon when you get there and you don’t make your free throws.”

Ohio State’s long and athletic frontcourt made life difficult for the Scarlet Knights, swatting eight shots, including a few layups that should have ended field goal droughts.

During that second-half swoon, Gavin Griffiths was ahead of the pack on the fast break with nobody to beat, but as he went up, Evan Mahaffey came out of nowhere to block the layup. Rutgers hadn’t hit a field goal in over five minutes when that happened, and it took another four-and-a-half for the next one to come.

“I remember looking up and it’s 38-32,” Aundre Hyatt said. “And then all of a sudden, we’re down 10 or 12 or something like that. It’s been happening in most games and we find a way to come back, but when we put ourselves in that drought early in the second half, it’s hard to come back from.”

In order for Rutgers to make a run in the Big Ten tournament, these elongated famines must be eliminated from the team’s vocabulary.

Against potential first-round opponent Maryland, Rutgers had a scoring drought that spanned the final six minutes of the first half, and the first two minutes of the second half. The Scarlet Knights went nearly ten minutes without a field goal in the first half against their other potential opponent, Penn State.

It’s easier said than done for the team that ranks 357th nationally in effective field goal percentage to simply hit shots, but that’s the only way Rutgers will have a chance to make noise in Minnesota.

On the other side of the coin, Ohio State shot 58 percent from the field in the second half, and was able to create open threes off of offensive rebounds and driving to collapse the defense.

Now sitting at 5-1 since firing Chris Holtmann, the Buckeyes still need to go on a serious run in the Big Ten Tournament to have a chance at the NCAA Tournament, but it’s more realistic than it once seemed.

“They’re playing great,” Pikiell said. “(Interim head coach Jake Diebler) is doing a fantastic job, I thought (Chris) Holtmann was a fantastic coach too, and they’re fantastic players. (Bruce) Thornton’s really good, (Jamison) Battle can shoot the ball as well as anybody, they have big guys up front, Roddy Gayle was shooting 48 percent from three going into our first game, and (Scotty) Middleton can really play off the bench. They have a really good roster, and they feel good about themselves right now.”

Ohio State right now is everything that Rutgers is not: A group of talented offensive players hitting their stride at the right time, coming out prepared for every game they play.

The switch has flipped on and off a few times this year in Piscataway. Now is the time when the spark has to light back up.