On the Gavitt Games, Rutgers' start and what fans want out of November
Scattered thoughts about the start of college basketball season after I joined a podcast to preview the Gavitt Games.
I want to start today’s newsletter discussing something I think belongs on the list of college basketball’s many beautiful contradictions.
It’s obvious that every team is still working out its kinks in the first few weeks of the season. That goes for college basketball, and it goes for almost any other sport you can name. Rare is the team that shows up on Day 1 and starts steamrolling everyone so badly that you’d have no qualms saying, “Yep, those guys will win the championship.” If anything, college football has the ripest conditions for this to happen; I’m thinking of the 2019 LSU team overflowing with future NFL stars. Even they had a few narrow victories.
At the same time, the fans and the greater college hoops media apparatus clamor for more marquee games in the first two weeks of November. We have good reason. The sport’s appeal is more niche and regional than ever and it doesn’t carry much juice if USC-Kansas State is the only interesting power-conference matchup on opening night, while Kentucky picks on New Mexico State and wins by 40.
Sure, four-team and eight-team tournaments from New York City to Florida to the Bahamas and Hawaii are right around the corner during Thanksgiving week (so-called “Feast Week”), but we can’t wait that long! So every so often, out-of-the-box solutions are created to try to liven up early November, like putting a couple of name-brand programs on an aircraft carrier for a game. Never mind if neither team is even close to midseason form.
Along these fault lines sit the Gavitt Tipoff Games. Since 2015 (and skipping 2020 for the pandemic), the Big East and Big Ten Conferences scheduled eight of their teams to face each other during the second week of the season, right in that sweet spot before Feast Week takes up the oxygen. Honestly, no team is really humming quite yet, which can make for more evenly matched – and therefore, more exciting – games.
It also makes for some games like this:
St. John’s can still be a very good basketball team this year. On paper, they looked better than Michigan. But St. John’s can’t defend right now. Rick Pitino said so himself in the preseason.
So could this have been a more interesting game in December or even January? I think that answer should be obvious. That’s not something these guys would go for, of course.
The Big Ten is withdrawing after this final year of the Gavitt Games agreement is up. It’s a case of two leagues with completely different priorities; the “new Big East” has survived and thrived as a basketball-focused league and won three national titles in seven years, and the Big Ten has swallowed up four West Coast universities in a desperate attempt to try to keep up with the SEC in football.
We aren’t getting the Gavitt Games in 2024-25, or possibly ever again. Could they revisit the concept in the future? Hold your breath if you want, sure. The Big East-Big 12 Battle is staying alive as those leagues compete for the right to call themselves the best men’s basketball conference in the country, but as a guy from the Northeast it doesn’t hold the same thrill for me.
If I may meekly propose a solution, the individual schools ought to take it into their own hands to schedule better. Rutgers already plays Seton Hall annually. Wisconsin already plays Marquette. Maryland should be playing Georgetown, and Kevin Willard and Ed Cooley apparently are going to make it happen. These regional rivalries could hold the key. Frankly, I’m not going to watch Michigan State-Butler on Friday, but you could sell me on Indiana and Butler meeting more frequently. What if these games could be coordinated and marketed over the span of one week?
Anyhow, with that as the backdrop, I joined Tim Best on his podcast, “The Igloo with Timmy Ice,” to preview this week’s Gavitt Games, along with Patrick Madden of the Big Big East Blog. You can check it out here; our segment is the first hour of the episode:
As Tony Reali used to say when his panelists came to the same conclusions, it was the game of competitive agreement as we ticked down the list. We all got Purdue right. We all got St. John’s wrong. Finally, when we reached Georgetown-Rutgers, I broke out of lockstep.
Rutgers may be ranked 31st in KenPom adjusted defensive efficiency this morning, but that belies the eye test for me. On Sunday, the Scarlet Knights let a Bryant team dealing with the absence of its (now former) head coach hang around inside five points nearly the entire day. The Bulldogs used just seven players, but it only took good shooting days from two of them, Rafael Pinzon and Connor Withers, to keep it close.
I was reminded of Rutgers’ season-opening loss to Princeton, how the Scarlet Knights looked a step slow on defense basically from start to finish. After that game, Steve Pikiell said among other things that the group could have used one more veteran defender for a game like that. We know who he was talking about.
If Mawot Mag makes his season debut Wednesday and is even at 50 percent of his old self, I’ll lean back toward Rutgers. It is clear the Scarlet Knights need him on the floor in order to go from good to great defensively. He’s finishing his rehab from his ACL tear last February and has been listed as questionable for all three games this season.
Without Mag defending, I think Georgetown’s offense is in a position to outpace Rutgers’. It’s not like Bryant shot the lights out of the RAC on Sunday, but they absolutely did better than Rutgers, which endured 19-for-61 shooting from the floor (31.1%) and 4-for-22 from 3-point range (18.2%). Gavin Griffiths went 2-for-11 after he flexed on a bad Boston University team Friday. Noah Fernandes and others are still finding their shot.
Pikiell and the Scarlet Knights can prove me wrong, but I don’t think Georgetown is at a severe talent disadvantage on paper and I’m sure Cooley will have the Hoyas ready for the task at hand after they let a game against Holy Cross get away from them.
Again, it is so early – a small sample size and not yet an alarm bell for the long term. That was what my intro to this column was for. But as these teams are currently constituted, I’m seeing a Georgetown win that looks something like 68-59.
………
I almost never spend time in this newsletter picking games, because whether I’m right or wrong, who cares? Doesn’t score me any credibility points or win me more paid subscribers. But it was a really, really fun change of pace to chat with Tim and Patrick on the podcast, and it got me thinking about the Gavitt Games at large and the state of Rutgers in particular.
As for this week, while undoubtedly most local media will be concentrated in Piscataway, I committed to make my first trip to Seton Hall of the season Wednesday as the Pirates entertain Albany. I’ll be back at Rutgers on Saturday night when the Scarlet Knights face Howard – my first doubleheader of the season, after Princeton and Monmouth meet by the shore that afternoon.
Another quick reminder that starting one week from today, Nov. 21, my Tuesday editions will be for paid subscribers only for the rest of the season. I’m hoping to experiment with ways to make a paid subscription worth the (affordable) price of $30 a season. It might take the form of columns like this one, but I also plan to dive more into analysis and metrics to look at the sport from different perspectives. My Thursday and Sunday newsletters will always be free to read. But a paid subscription helps put a coffee in my hand and gas in my car as I set out to bring you the most comprehensive New Jersey college basketball coverage one independent writer can provide. Thanks!