Five statistical trends to explain Rutgers’ woeful start
Despite their weak strength of schedule, we're staring down a 3-2 Rutgers squad that's lost two straight.
I could have spent today’s edition of Guarden State writing about Seton Hall’s busy Monday, first earning a ranking in the Top 25 and then losing a heart-stopping ending to Ohio State. But going into Monday, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d told me the Pirates would lose that game.
On the other hand, if you’d said winless Lafayette would beat Rutgers 53-51, we’d have an issue.
Yet here we are, staring down a 3-2 Rutgers squad that has dropped two straight games by a combined five points. In reality, it could be even more disastrous, considering the Scarlet Knights needed overtime to beat Lehigh on opening night.
By all accounts, this shouldn’t be happening. Rutgers’ strength of schedule so far ranks 330th of 358 per KenPom. Four of its five games have come at home, where until recently, it was impenetrable. What’s most worrisome of all for fans of the program? This year’s team carried expectations of another run at the NCAA Tournament – something Rutgers basketball hadn’t been known for at all until the pandemic-ruined 2019-20 campaign. It had the returning seniors (Ron Harper Jr., Geo Baker) to shoulder those expectations. But this looks like anything but a tourney team.
The Lafayette box score stunned me in a few key ways:
Rutgers was ice-cold from the floor, shooting 28.6 percent and 15.4 percent from three;
Lafayette outrebounded Rutgers 42-29 (seriously – not a typo);
Rutgers still could have stolen a victory despite such a poor overall performance had it not been for a last-second three by Kyle Jenkins of Lafayette. Harper had hit the clutch shot when you would expect him to, a 3-pointer of his own with 30 seconds left to put Rutgers in front 51-50.
It left me wondering how many areas have been repeat issues for Rutgers, or if it’s a new story every night. These five statistical trends don’t tell the entire story of this disappointing two-week stretch in Piscataway, but they get to the heart of what needs to improve – and fast. After all, Illinois and Purdue are just two weeks away.
1. Slow first halves
You know this if you’ve followed my rather incessant tweets pointing it out, but Rutgers hadn’t held a halftime lead all season – ironically, until Monday. It led 29-28 over Lafayette after 20 minutes. Big whoop. This team trailed Lehigh, Merrimack and NJIT at the break before kicking into a higher gear to put those games away. They’ve started slow enough times now to start asking some questions.
From my perspective, Rutgers’ defense has not been a big part of its undoing, but this is the one spot where I’ll criticize the D. By and large, opponents are beating Rutgers from the jump. Lafayette went ahead 14-9 with threes from three different players. NJIT’s last six buckets of the first half were 3-pointers. Lehigh did its damage in the paint. When the Knights need time to establish a rhythm on offense (more on their shooting in a bit), the defensive effort can’t let them fall behind and force them to play catch-up all day.
2. Free throws
This is one of those annoyingly obvious axioms casual sports fans and media types throw around all the time, so I’ll keep it short. Rutgers missed eight free throws Monday – you think some of those would’ve helped change the outcome? The Knights settled into 220th place in Division I with a 67.57 FT percentage before Monday’s game; the NCAA website hasn’t updated the rankings as of this writing, but now the number has dropped to 67.01 percent.
Against DePaul, Rutgers took just six free throws while the Blue Demons got 33 (and made a putrid 18). I think this was more anomalous than anything else, though. Rutgers hasn’t had trouble drawing fouls in other games.
3. Bench contributions
Where to begin? How about the fact that Rutgers’ bench shot a combined 1-for-14 against Lafayette and scored five points? Steve Pikiell didn’t ask the reserves for a ton – it was a tight game throughout, after all – but 1-for-14 (and 0-for-8 from three) won’t cut it. On the season, the bench hasn’t contributed more than 17 points in a game yet. It isn’t as though the reserves were making an impact on defense, either. Dean Reiber posted a minus-5 Monday, and Jaden Jones and Caleb McConnell were minus-6.
Go back to Thursday. DePaul only used seven players, with starter Javon Freeman-Liberty playing all 40 minutes. In a game like that, your team’s depth can provide a huge advantage. Rutgers went 10 deep but only Aundre Hyatt made any noise, posting nine points and eight rebounds. Jones had a nice game against Merrimack, but as a freshman he’s still getting his legs under him.
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4. The guards
McConnell is slumping something awful. Zero points in Rutgers’ two losses. Pikiell moved him out of the starting lineup for Lafayette in favor of adding a forward, Hyatt, who also happened to be the hotter hand. Coming off the bench, though, didn’t change much for McConnell, who’s now 0-for-11 in the last two and 5-for-30 on the year.
Starting guards Baker and Paul Mulcahy have been up-and-down as well. Mulcahy (and McConnell, for that matter) went scoreless against Merrimack. Harper told us after that game that Mulcahy had good looks, but was cursed by several in-and-outs. He’s slowly come along, reaching double figures for the first time this season against Lafayette, but Baker was nowhere to be found. Three points on 1-for-7 shooting, one assist and two turnovers caused Pikiell to shorten his minutes a bit after the senior had a few great showings against NJIT and DePaul.
It goes without saying that Rutgers is a much better team when all three of these guards are in good form on offense at the same time. Five games in, we haven’t seen that yet.
Bonus stat: Rutgers ranks last among Big Ten teams in 3-point shooting at 24.2 percent.
5. The rebounding question
I keep coming back to Monday’s insane rebounding margin. Throw out the games against Merrimack and NJIT for a second; Rutgers benefited from the height advantage one gets when facing low-major squads. In the DePaul loss, the Knights had a modest 39-36 rebounding advantage. In the Lehigh squeaker, they were outrebounded 43-41.
A more informative way to measure rebounding is defensive rebounding percentage. By dividing Team A’s defensive rebounds over the sum of those defensive rebounds and the opponent’s offensive boards, you end up with a rate at which Team A is cleaning the glass and not allowing its opponent second chances to score.
On Monday, Rutgers’ defensive rebounding percentage was 73.1. Against DePaul, it was 64.1. Which, uh... could be better.
........
At this juncture, it’s up to Pikiell and his staff to decide the best course of action. That could mean drawing up ways to get his guards better looks, utilizing the bench differently, changing the strategy on the boards – really, any number of things. The season is hardly lost for Rutgers, but stay tuned: The competition only gets tougher from here.
And thank you, by the way, for making it this far into what’s surely my longest edition of Guarden State to date. Let’s clean the glass with an all-Seton Hall notebook section:
The Pirates fell from the ranks of the unbeaten with a 79-76 loss to Ohio State on a neutral court in Fort Myers, Fla. It was a heck of an exciting game, and just like they did against Michigan, the Pirates clawed their way back throughout the second half. The Buckeyes led by as many as 12 and made 11 3-pointers. Jared Rhoden went into hero mode and scored a career-best 29. As Jerry Carino said on Twitter, letting freshman Meechie Johnson heave up that last-second three was not the worst choice Hall could have made. There were higher-percentage possibilities to defend first.
Myles Cale suffered a strained groin and will “obviously be out next game,” per Kevin Willard. Cale hurt it on a fast-break layup in the first half where it appeared he wanted to dunk, then thought wiser of it. Cale is a starter, an important piece on defense and Hall’s third-leading scorer before leaving early against Ohio State. The Pirates don’t need him in order to beat Cal in the consolation game Wednesday, but they do need him back healthy before Big East play.
The loss came hours after Seton Hall earned its first ranking of the season, perhaps ensuring it doesn’t remain ranked next week. Lots of “Feast Week” basketball is still to be played, and a three-point loss to a good Ohio State team isn’t a torpedo, but that’s how lots of AP voters react to such things. I thought the No. 21 position was an interesting landing spot for Hall. It was one better than Big East rival UConn, and perhaps it would have been even higher had Michigan not suffered a second, far bigger loss to Arizona on Sunday, taking some of the shine off the Pirates’ upset.