Dylan Harper returns, and Rutgers finally plays to its full potential
In upsetting No. 23 Illinois, the Scarlet Knights proved they have a tournament-caliber team when Harper is running the show.
PISCATAWAY – Given the outsized impact Dylan Harper had on Rutgers’ upset of No. 23 Illinois Wednesday night, and how players must have felt having him back in the fold, a celebratory Gatorade shower may have been called for. But Harper was glad his teammates didn’t go for one.
“Nah, they dumped no water on me today,” he said. “But thank God. That is cold.”
Cold, like one of the three 3-pointers Harper stroked, two in the second half after Rutgers had already wasted a 17-point head start to the game. Or his skip pass to a cutting Ace Bailey on the very first sequence out of halftime, leading him into a thunderous dunk.
Limited by a high ankle sprain since Jan. 20 at Penn State, Harper appeared back to his old self on Wednesday. His final stat line wasn’t this robust since his triple-double against Columbia, and the RAC hadn’t rung this loudly since his buzzer-beater against Seton Hall.
After his 28 points, six rebounds, five assists and four steals contributed to an 82-73 home win over Illinois, Rutgers’ biggest of the season, one can’t help but wonder what could have been if Harper had been healthy throughout January.
“Before he got the flu,” coach Steve Pikiell said, “he was the best guard in the country.”
The cold truth of this Rutgers season is that some shortcomings can’t be pinned on bad scheduling choices or suboptimal roster construction. Harper missed one game with the flu, played 15 scoreless minutes the next time out against Wisconsin and was still suffering ill effects Jan. 9 against Purdue. After two healthy games back, he picked up his ankle injury and scored only seven against Penn State; he tried to help off the bench against Michigan State but sat most of the second half; and he missed the next two games.
That’s seven of the past 10 games where one of the most dynamic two-way guards in college basketball was not at 100%, if available at all. Rutgers went 4-6 in those 10, with wins over UCLA, Nebraska and Illinois in the games Harper was at full-go.
It’s become a refrain for Pikiell to bemoan the lack of a healthy roster, adding in the loss of Emmanuel Ogbole (knee) and Jeremiah Williams’ recent bout with illness. Harper even mentioned it briefly postgame.
“We’ve never been healthy full strength, full force,” Harper said. “And then when we finally get somewhat there, I mean, you see what happens every time. All our wins, I mean, we’ve pretty much been full force, full health. Just bad luck sometimes, but you’ve got to live with it.”
Then Harper was asked if it’s hard not to play the “what if?” game about his difficult month.
“Yeah, but I mean, I gotta leave it up to God,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason. I mean, hopefully good comes out of that. I mean, went through a little tough stretch in January, but I’m just happy to be back, grateful, and I don’t like thinking about them times. I just wanna get on to the next.”
That’s all Rutgers can do now. There’s no room for error in the final eight games of the regular season. The good news for the Scarlet Knights is that Wednesday proved they have a tournament-caliber team when Harper is running the show.
It’s about much more than plugging 28 points and five assists back into the lineup. Harper makes his teammates better, which can’t be said for every star player. It begins with his fellow five-star freshman.
“Got D-Harp back, I mean, it opens a lot for me,” said Bailey (18 points, 11 rebounds). “I ain’t got to worry about two or three people trying to box me out at the same time because they got to worry about D-Harp attacking. That leaves me, ‘OK, rebound, rebound, rebound,’ while he’s in attack mode. And that opens up for a lot more for our teammates, like PJ (Hayes) hit the big-time three (in the second half). Lathan (Sommerville) hit the pick-and-pop. Zach (Martini) hit the three. It opens up a lot for us and a lot of options.”
Harper and Jamichael Davis also led a terrific first-half defensive effort that forced Illinois to start 3-of-17 from the field. They turned stops into scores, and while several plays were worthy of attention, the undisputed arena-melter was Bailey’s block that turned into a fastbreak dunk.
The Fighting Illini were too good a team to be denied for much longer. They opened the second half by scoring on a ludicrous 15 of their first 16 possessions. Rutgers, whose largest lead was 23-6 and whose halftime edge was 37-29, fell behind for the first time with 13:06 still to go.
“Everyone going to make a run. Game of runs,” Harper said. “Illinois is a great team, ranked for a reason.
“For us, it’s always been a we over me. We’re gonna do whatever we got to do to win and we’re gonna help out the next guy.”
Bailey mentioned Hayes and Martini, who made timely threes to start to stem the tide midway through the second half. Much as I want to take a victory lap three weeks after writing about the importance of the timely three to this offense, there was a play Hayes made that was even more critical to Rutgers’ win.
The Scarlet Knights had grabbed a 75-69 lead and needed to play keep-away while bleeding the last 1:48. They were playing without a true center after Sommerville fouled out, with Hayes in the game instead of Martini. The ball got around to Hayes in the left corner with the shot clock ticking down, and he stepped back for what would have been an ill-advised three.
But he pumped instead, and then did something Hayes rarely does: He drove to the basket. It was just his 11th 2-point attempt of the season, and when the layup didn’t fall, he corralled his own rebound with 1:16 to go, resetting the shot clock and essentially icing the game.
Maturity and wise decision-making were evident throughout the night. As young as Rutgers is at its core, the mental toughness not to let a blown lead bring it down might be the biggest takeaway from Harper’s return.
“We all trust each other out there,” Harper said. “I mean, I don’t think there’s a time where you could pull up (game) film without me getting mad at Ace, Ace getting mad at me, J-Will getting mad at all of us … It’s just we all love each other, care for each other. We’re going to go out there and compete. I mean, next game, it’s one game at a time, focus on the scouting report and play our brand of basketball.”
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Hello, and welcome back to Guarden State. February is in full swing now – I’ve got doubleheaders each of the next three Saturdays – and, for now, Rutgers kept a spark of hope alive for an NCAA Tournament run. Brad Wachtel believes the Scarlet Knights must go at least 6-2 down the stretch for a shot at an at-large; I think 7-1 might be more accurate.
Let’s clean the glass and get on with a snowy, rainy and/or icy Thursday:
Returning to Jeremiah Williams for a second, the senior guard and co-captain had been sicker than we knew. He tried to play Saturday against Michigan but didn’t return for the second half. On Wednesday, he gutted out 25 minutes, scoring 13 points, before revealing to Jerry Carino that he still wasn’t right and hadn’t eaten a proper meal in 10 days. “I’m down 12 pounds from all the throwing up,” Williams said. “On the bright side, I feel a little faster – a little younger.” What a quote.
New low for Seton Hall: An 84-54 home loss to a Butler team that hadn’t won on the road all season, in front of a practically empty crowd. With Dylan Addae-Wusu, Chaunce Jenkins and Scotty Middleton all injured, Seton Hall had only Prince Aligbe to provide any offense (Isaiah Coleman went 1-for-10) while Butler made 57.9% of its shots and 50% from three. This was never a game. Afterward, Shaheen Holloway (rightfully) rejected a question about reconstructing his roster if he could do it over again. H/T Daly Dose of Hoops: “To ask that question is kind of not fair to my guys. If I could do something different with the roster? If I say something like that, how does that look on me?”
In a more important Seton Hall game, the women lost 72-56 at Creighton in a battle between second and third place in the Big East. The Pirates slipped behind by 12 at halftime and couldn’t recover, as shots just weren’t falling except for Savannah Catalon’s and Kaydan Lawson’s (11 points apiece). It was one of the few Quad 1 opportunities Seton Hall had left to bolster its NCAA Tournament resume. I’ll be in the building when the Pirates host mighty UConn on Feb. 19.
Award watchlists were everywhere earlier this week, and at the risk of leaving someone out: Dylan Harper is a top-10 candidate for the Bob Cousy Award for point guard of the year, Ace Bailey is on the 10-man watchlist for the Julius Erving Award for best small forward, they’re both on the midseason watchlist for the USBWA’s Oscar Robertson Trophy (player of the year) and Rutgers WBB star Destiny Adams is on the watchlist for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award, the women’s equivalent to the Robertson. Also, Monmouth guard Madison Durr made this week’s National Players of the Week team by the USBWA after his ridiculous last two games I wrote about Sunday.