Column: New Jersey rides the ‘L’ train
We’re not doing so hot over here.
This morning’s essay must start with an admission. I didn’t plan on writing about the Rutgers men’s team today, because I didn’t plan on them losing to Kennesaw State.
I’m coming off a packed but really enjoyable weekend, which I started by publishing a short feature story on FDU and Terrence Brown that made the rounds on Saturday (link here if you missed it). There were no games in the state for me to travel to that day, but I was looking forward to Sunday and the Princeton-Rutgers women’s game at the RAC. I picked up an assignment for the Trentonian, the product of which can you read here. And I was planning to make today’s newsletter all about women’s basketball, as well, a companion piece to my Trentonian coverage.
So imagine my surprise, dear reader, when a narrow Kennesaw State lead early in the game became a 44-24 blowout-in-the-making just before halftime.
No time for me to pivot – I had to focus on the women’s game in front of me. And despite the Scarlet Knights taking a damaging 79-77 loss and the ripple effects that can have on the rest of their season, I’m not going to dedicate a full newsletter to a game I didn’t watch.
To tell the truth, many of the main teams this newsletter covers are not feeling so hot entering Thanksgiving week. Five of them, in fact, deserve another update after I touched on each of them in my Feast Week primer.
I will have far more to say about Rutgers in a column next Monday after we see how they rally from this loss at the Players Era Festival. Don’t assume that Rutgers will go 0-3 this week against good competition because it couldn’t beat Kennesaw State. College basketball just doesn’t work like that. The Scarlet Knights get Notre Dame as an appetizer Tuesday before staring down Alabama the next night; coincidentally, Notre Dame also heads to Las Vegas after losing a game it was supposed to win, an 84-77 home defeat to Elon. It goes without saying that Rutgers has to forget the sting of the loss in the Atlanta suburbs and zero in on the Notre Dame game plan on a short turnaround, because that’s still an eminently winnable game.
All that said, allow me to panic for a minute about Rutgers’ rebounding. I thought we were over this! I thought we were past this! The Scarlet Knights had some truly atrocious rebounding efforts last season, but to be minus-19 on the boards to an opponent like this when you roster Ace Bailey, the big-bodied Emmanuel Ogbole and a tough veteran like Zach Martini is the most confounding performance this program has had in two years. Kennesaw State turned 14 rebounds into 22 second-chance points.
“You have to get off the mat. This is a big boy league with us playing Notre Dame and Alabama, and whoever else, so we don’t have a lot of time to be sorry for ourselves,” Steve Pikiell said. “We have to figure it out. If we played like we played in the second half, we will be fine, but we have to play for 40 minutes and that’s what we have to teach them to do.”
Rutgers’ defense this year is another topic entirely, but let’s leave that for next week and issue a concern level out of five.
Concern for Rutgers: 4 out of 5
I’m able to be far more nuanced and specific about the Rutgers women after watching their 66-49 loss to Princeton on Sunday. But ironically, we are still talking about rebounding.
Entering this game, I was high on Rutgers’ chances to beat the Tigers for a few reasons. I figured losing Madison St. Rose made Princeton more vulnerable, and I thought Destiny Adams and Chyna Cornwell were set up to dominate the inside. Cornwell played Princeton each of the past two years and was held scoreless both times, but Ellie Mitchell wasn’t there to shut her down anymore. Adams, meanwhile, was a top-three scorer and top-five rebounder in Division I in the early going. When Rutgers had their first step up in competition at Virginia Tech, Adams still put up a respectable 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting.
Here’s what happened instead: Ashley Chea (20 points) and Skye Belker (13) took over scoring responsibilities in St. Rose’s absence, and the Tigers absolutely crashed the boards and stuffed the paint. Adams still had 10 rebounds, but Princeton’s guards and wings were grabbing everything in sight. Three players had career highs in the category: Fadima Tall (10, part of her first double-double), Chea (nine) and Olivia Hutcherson (nine).
“It was underlined, it was circled, it was bold: The rebounding game was huge,” Carla Berube said of her team’s game plan. “…Our bigs were doing the work of boxing out, we needed our guards to get in there and help out.”
Berube said it was a team effort to defend Adams, keeping her to a season-low four points on 2-of-5 shooting. Cornwell scored her four from the free-throw line and Princeton outscored Rutgers 36-20 in the paint.
“They did a good job of taking Destiny away and she’s a dynamic player and she had to play in a crowd all night tonight,” Rutgers coach Coquese Washington said. “We just never quite could get into a rhythm offensively, especially in the halfcourt, because they did a good job of taking Destiny out of it.”
What does it mean for Rutgers? Be ready for physical Big Ten opponents to double Adams and force freshman Kiyomi McMiller to do everything. The five-star signing had a career-high 27 points Sunday but took a handful of ill-advised shots early in possessions.
Concern for Rutgers women: 3 out of 5
Princeton shot 50 percent from the field, made 16 3-pointers and had 13 steals against eight turnovers in a 94-67 rout of Portland on Sunday. The Tigers led by 40 at one point. Freshman big CJ Happy played meaningful minutes for the first time and went 7-of-9 for 16 points with a pair of triples.
It was the seventh-place game in Myrtle Beach. It tipped off at 10:30 a.m. It shouldn’t have happened at all, but the Tigers dug themselves that hole by losing to Wright State and Texas State.
Princeton fans on social media are still (rightfully) reeling from how the Tigers began this MTE. I’m mad I didn’t see the challenge from Wright State coming, because Brandon Noel is one of the best players in the Horizon League and I happened to write the preview of that conference for Lindy’s this summer. Princeton couldn’t solve him on the inside, and he made them pay with 27 points, nine rebounds and several trips to the line that resulted in 11-for-11 shooting.
For Game 2 against Texas State, Mitch Henderson started senior Philip Byriel at center after trying Jacob Huggins and Malik Abdullahi there previously. The Tigers proceeded to yield 61.5 percent shooting on 2-pointers, 42 points in the paint and 11 offensive rebounds to a team picked to finish seventh in the Sun Belt. This team has so much work to do before Ivy play comes around.
Concern for Princeton: 3.5 out of 5
For all the sturm und drang about Seton Hall’s ugly losses to Fordham and Hofstra, I’m somehow feeling better about the team from South Orange than its Jersey counterparts three weeks into the season.
I still don’t see an NCAA Tournament team here – and again, they’re free to prove me wrong – but a few realities have emerged. One, this is going to be a hard-as-nails defense for the average opponent to play against; the likes of UConn and Marquette have the talent to overcome it, but there will be nights in December, January and February that Seton Hall wins with its defense, which is exactly what it wants to do.
Two, Chaunce Jenkins is the most reliable offensive player the Pirates have. The irony has already been pointed out that Jenkins was perhaps the least discussed, least hyped of Seton Hall’s 83 transfer players this preseason. Yet he has led the Pirates in scoring in each of their four wins, including against VCU and Florida Atlantic in Charleston, and he’s been held to 9.0 ppg in the three games they lost, including three Friday in the semifinal against Vanderbilt. The offense cannot and must not just be Jenkins. But since Seton Hall scored in the 60s in all three games in Charleston after failing to break 57 against four mid-majors to start the year… we’ll call that progress and move on.
Concern for Seton Hall: 2.5 out of 5
I hate to kick a team when it’s down, but I think we have to finish a column like this by mentioning Monmouth. After all, there are 364 teams playing Division I basketball and only one has lost eight games thus far, and it’s the team from the Jersey Shore.
Two years ago, Monmouth started 0-8 in the span of 22 days, including to Seton Hall and ranked Virginia and Illinois teams. The Hawks beat that speedrun record this year by fitting eight games into the first 20 days of the season and getting creative in the ways they lost each one (zero defense against Temple, 38 points from Abdi Bashir Jr. to make it close against Rutgers, blown lead in a would-be upset against Wichita State, you get the picture).
But two years ago, the Hawks won their ninth game of the season and then proceeded to go 1-17 before figuring things out halfway through conference play. Are they on a similar path this year? Lehigh (285) and Fairfield (296), two upcoming opponents, are both KenPom neighbors of Monmouth (300), whose metrics could look far worse all things considered. First, we’ll see them visit Seton Hall this Saturday. Man, that game could get ugly in about six different ways.
Concern for Monmouth: 3 out of 5