Rutgers’ NCAA Tournament return even more meaningful to long-thirsting fan base

Dave White and his son, Ben, in stands at the RAC in 2017. (Photo by Dave White)

As Rutgers completes its final preparations for Friday’s NCAA Tournament opener against Clemson, it means just as much, if not more, to a long-patient fan base that has clamored for this moment over the past three decades in lockstep with the numerous coaches and players in between Bob Wenzel and Steve Pikiell, Keith Hughes and Geo Baker, who tried to bring March Madness back to the banks of the old Raritan.

For Dave White, a longtime season ticket holder who also contributes to Rutgers media coverage for On The Banks, he remembers 1991, even if he was not fully immersed in college basketball at the time.

“I was in sixth grade,” White, 41, recalled. “I was reading comics and watching sitcoms. I think my first college hoops memory is Christian Laettner beating Kentucky (in the 1992 NCAA Tournament).”

As the years went on, though, White — a class of 2001 Rutgers alum who later became an award-winning author — soon lived and died with his alma mater along its circuitous road to the promised land, citing last year’s overtime win at Purdue that would have locked the Scarlet Knights into last year’s field of 68 had the pandemic not cancelled the tournament among the greatest moments of the last three decades. Seeing Rutgers’ name on the bracket this past Sunday provided a sense of closure, and also relief, to the two-year journey Pikiell has often spoke of.

“I hate to put it that way, because this is awesome and exciting, and I’m really happy, but it’s a relief,” said White. “Logistically, I knew they were in, but I still needed to see it. It would have felt really crummy if the team did all that work, made it last year and then missed it this year. And seeing it? It was awesome.”

Now a father of two sons, 8-year-old Ben, who tags along to a few games, and 21-month-old Carter, White gets to take in a moment that felt impossible once upon a time, seemed improbable, and now lies ever so close, while sharing it with a new generation of Rutgers fans blessed to enjoy such an experience so early in life.

“Ben is even going to try to stay up with me on Friday to watch it,” he declared. “But I don’t know if he’s going to enjoy how gray-haired this game is going to make me. Either way, though, it’s just awesome. They got here. We exhaled. Now, it’s time to be excited to try and beat Clemson.”

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Danny Breslauer (far right), taking in a Rutgers game with (from left) his father, brother, and mother. (Photo by Danny Breslauer)

Danny Breslauer was only two years old in 1991, but the youthful innocence of that time did nothing to hinder the significance of the past three decades and the journey back to prominence.

“There was an understanding of it,” he admitted. The son of Dr. Kenneth Breslauer, a biochemist and cancer researcher who has been a part of the Rutgers community for the past 47 years as the founding dean of the university’s department of life sciences and also as an administrator while also attending several games at the old College Avenue Gymnasium during the Final Four season of 1975-76, Danny has seen the struggle both inside the trapezoidal walls of the RAC as a student, alumnus and broadcaster, and on the outside looking in as a lifelong fan raised on basketball in Piscataway from the Scarlet Knights’ last days in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

“I lived a lot of this, so I have a greater understanding,” he said as he counts Rutgers’ run to the quarterfinals of the 2018 Big Ten tournament as the moment which sold him on a brighter future for a program mired in a decades-long morass. “They showed up Friday and played Purdue toe-to-toe, and from that point forward, I was like, ‘it’s not going to be pretty, but there will be a time when the ball bounces the right way.’”

But even the prospect of better days did not quell the nerves on Selection Sunday for the 32-year-old, who remembers taking the train to Madison Square Garden with his family to see Rutgers in the 2004 National Invitation Tournament semifinals and seeing firsthand the euphoria of nearly 15,000 scarlet-clad fans, not to mention the previous season’s upset of Carmelo Anthony and eventual national champion Syracuse.

“If we didn’t see a bracket for a second straight year, it would have broken me,” Breslauer said in a voice equal parts serious and light-hearted. “It would have been hard on me mentally to have it stolen from me two years in a row, so I think Sunday was the catharsis moment.”

“Once it went to the third bracket, it was just a matter of which Big Ten team was a 2 (seed). When they weren’t a 9, I knew it was either of two draws: UConn-Alabama, or Houston-Clemson. I knew it was a statistical impossibility.”

Breslauer and his brother, Jordan, born in October 1991, seven months after Rutgers’ last NCAA Tournament appearance — “the perfect encapsulation of the Rutgers drought,” Danny joked — will be on hand in Indianapolis to see the historic return, driving from New Jersey Thursday and staying at an Airbnb near Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Should the Scarlet Knights defeat Clemson, the two will work on extending their stay, but neither will be dissatisfied should Friday’s contest end in a loss.

“I spoke to Bob Wenzel, and I think he’s happy he’s no longer the answer to a trivia question,” Danny quipped. “(It means) so much, it’s almost impossible to put into words. Being there myself, I feel like the experience of being there is enough. If they lose to Clemson, am I going to say it was an unsuccessful season? Absolutely not. Taking on a Houston team many people probably have in the Elite 8 or Final Four, on a Sunday with all the eyes on you, that’s the exciting part.”

“1991 was a black eye. It means a ton to the people who are basketball-first, so considering the trials and tribulations the program went through, this is the payoff.”