A New Jersey Feast Week primer, plus notes on Rutgers vs. Merrimack
Both Seton Hall and Princeton are playing basketball games in South Carolina today, Friday and Sunday.
In a fun coincidence, both Seton Hall and Princeton are spending the weekend in South Carolina, playing basketball games today, Friday and Sunday. I like to imagine that the teams shared one big charter bus that dropped them off at their respective stops. They could talk about their games against Rutgers next month and swap notes.
So it’s not quite Feast WeekTM yet, if you define the term to mean the week of Thanksgiving, when the Maui Invitational and Battle 4 Atlantis specifically are played. But the major tournaments and multi-team events that pepper the November calendar begin today, and several New Jersey teams are in action, headlined by Seton Hall at the Charleston Classic and Princeton at the Myrtle Beach Invitational. A few more big ones, for the Rutgers men and Seton Hall women, await next week as Turkey Day approaches.
Let’s dive in. I’ve got a primer explaining which teams are playing where, against whom and when, ordered chronologically with all times ET. It also allows us to spend a second evaluating how these teams have fared in the first two-plus weeks of games. (If you’re only interested in my review of Rutgers-Merrimack, you’ll have to scroll down about 1,300 words.)
Men’s games:
Seton Hall: Charleston Classic, Charleston, S.C.
Thursday, Nov. 21, 5 p.m. vs. VCU
Friday, Nov. 22 vs. Vanderbilt or Nevada
Sunday, Nov. 24 vs. Miami, Drake, Oklahoma State or Florida Atlantic
All four quarterfinal games in Charleston pit a power-conference team against a mid-major opponent, but Seton Hall drew the short straw. VCU is a 6.5-point favorite to beat the Pirates, because VCU is pretty clearly better. This is a 4-0 team with a 25-point, neutral-floor win over Boston College already on its mantle, sitting No. 34 in KenPom with a top-12 scoring defense. If the Pirates’ offense (53.8 ppg) were to finally get going against this opponent, it would be the upset of the month. I’m not trying to be rude, but if you’re outside New Jersey and can bet on Seton Hall-VCU, hammer the Rams ATS.
OK, that’s out of my system. Now, how about the rest of the bracket? You’ve got a good Nevada team or a decent Vanderbilt group waiting in the second round, and the Pirates probably have a chance against either of them, more so Vandy. What’s wild to me is that on Sunday, say in the fifth-sixth or seventh-eighth game, Seton Hall could face Oklahoma State… exactly two weeks before the Cowboys visit the Pirates as part of the Big 12-Big East Battle. Two teams from different conferences playing each other twice in the same regular season is a rarity in college hoops.
Princeton: Myrtle Beach Invitational, Conway, S.C.
Thursday, Nov. 21, 5 p.m. vs. Wright State
Friday, Nov. 22 vs. Bradley or Texas State
Sunday, Nov. 24 vs. Ohio, Middle Tennessee, South Florida or Portland
It wasn’t long ago that Princeton could be invited to a Thanksgiving week tournament, pick up a win over a Power 5 team and make a run at the title. Just three years ago, they upset South Carolina and took Minnesota to double overtime in the final in a tournament in Asheville, N.C., and that’s just one example. This field is not nearly that strong – Wright State, for starters, has just one win over a D1 opponent – and on paper, Princeton is one of the two or three favorites.
But the Tigers own about the most uninspiring 4-1 record in college basketball. All five games have been close, and it’s a credit to them that they’ve toughed out wins in four of them, but we’re all waiting for them to hit another gear we believe they’re capable of. This could be the place to start. The best championship game matchup would feature Princeton vs. South Florida – that’s the best-case scenario for the Tigers’ resume, too.
Monmouth: Stephen F. Austin multi-team event (the inaugural “Axe ‘Em Classic”), Nacogdoches, Texas
Thursday, Nov. 21, 5 p.m. vs. Youngstown State
Friday, Nov. 22, 6 p.m. vs. Stephen F. Austin
Saturday, Nov. 23, 12 p.m. vs. Presbyterian
King Rice must love these three-games-in-three-days MTEs. The Hawks went win-win-loss at the Palestra this time last year, and now he’s taking them a bit farther from home for a similar gauntlet. If we’re going by KenPom, Youngstown (183) and SFA (184) are a league above Monmouth (276) and the Presbyterian Blue Hose (273).
But Monmouth is better than its 0-5 record would make you believe, and I think the Hawks get their first win of the season, if not two, in Nacogdoches. The season started slow (without Jaret Valencia, remember), but after a better showing at Rutgers last week, they went to Wichita State and took the Shockers down to the wire in a four-point loss, outrebounding them by seven.
NJIT: Cleveland State “Thanksgiving Throwback,” Cleveland
Tuesday, Nov. 26, 6 p.m. vs. Cleveland State
Wednesday, Nov. 27, 4 p.m. vs. Morehead State
Well, it’s a bummer to report, but NJIT is 0-5 and its metrics are near the bottom of Division I. At No. 361 in KenPom, it’s ahead of only Arkansas Pine Bluff, Coppin State and Mississippi Valley State. The Highlanders let a lead against Penn get away on opening night, and a similar scene went down last Saturday at Morgan State.
Grant Billmeier takes his team to Cleveland and will have them home in time for the holiday. Like Monmouth, could this trip be where NJIT picks up its first win? Morehead State, which hasn’t scored more than 63 against a D1 opponent, looks like the better opportunity.
Rutgers: Players Era Festival (the almighty “Impact Group”), Las Vegas
Tuesday, Nov. 26, 10:30 p.m. vs. Notre Dame
Wednesday, Nov. 27, 10 p.m. vs. No. 8 Alabama
Saturday, Nov. 30 vs. No. 14 Creighton, No. 23 Texas A&M, Oregon or San Diego State
There’s been an update since I wrote about the suspiciously slapdash Players Era Festival back in September: Instead of keeping teams within their own group (“Impact” and “Power”), there will be a championship day where the groups cross over to decide first place, third place and so on. This will hurt Rutgers’ overall resume even if it manages to start the week 2-0, because it loses Houston off its schedule and instead will play an Oregon or a TAMU.
My doubts aside, this is easily the most high-wattage event on this list. I love the matchup against 4-0 Notre Dame, as we’ll get to play “You Remember Him” with Irish players Tae Davis (Seton Hall), Matt Allocco (Princeton) and Nikita Konstantynovskyi (Monmouth). The bigger fish is Alabama – the opportunity to beat old pal Cliff Omoruyi and take down a top-10 team. It’s slim odds, but not impossible, that Rutgers’ freshmen show up Alabama’s older core.
Not going anywhere special: Rider, Saint Peter’s, FDU
Women’s games of note:
Seton Hall: Acrisure Holiday Invitational, Palm Springs, Calif.
Wednesday, Nov. 27, 7 p.m. vs. No. 3 USC
As part of my day job for Field Level Media, I build our college basketball schedules and assign writers to a good portion of the games. That makes this time of year, uh, taxing, because basically every Power 5 team is going somewhere, often in a bracketed tournament with if/then scenarios. And let me tell you, if I never see the word Acrisure again, I’d cry with joy. There are 21 total teams, men’s and women’s, going to Palm Springs next week for one or more games in the not-at-all-confusingly-titled Acrisure Classic, Acrisure Invitational and Acrisure Holiday Invitational. Superb marketing, no notes.
With that off my chest, I’m pivoting hard to some sincere excitement for this game. Seton Hall has a real chance to enter this game at 5-0; its only game in the interim is tonight at home against Princeton, which looks wobbly this year and lost Madison St. Rose to a leg injury. The Pirates had a promising win the other night at Cincinnati that required them to come back from down 10 in the final four minutes. And you’ve gotta see this ridiculous falling-down pass from freshman Jada Eads that led to a three.
USC is another matter, though. Do the Pirates have enough in the post to contend with Kiki Iriafen? And how will they choose to defend star guard JuJu Watkins? Asking for a win may be a stretch, but we could learn a lot about Hall’s potential from this one.
Rutgers: The inaugural “Battle on the Banks,” Piscataway, N.J.
Friday, Nov. 29, 2 p.m. vs. Marquette
Saturday, Nov. 30, 2 p.m. vs. Georgia Southern
This is the first year Rutgers is holding a Thanksgiving weekend multi-team event, and it’s a nice opportunity to bring some fans in the building for the women’s team while the men are out on the Strip. Marquette, 1-2, was picked 10th in the Big East preseason coaches’ poll and rates outside the top 100 by BartTorvik.com. The Golden Eagles offer a good chance for Rutgers to get a Power 5 win after it came up short at Virginia Tech (that game had a whopping 19 lead changes and 22 ties, by the way).
………
Last Friday, after Rutgers got past Monmouth and shifted its sights to its next opponent, Merrimack, I asked Jordan Derkack how much Steve Pikiell will want him to help out on Rutgers’ scout against his former team.
“I think I’ll be as involved in the scout as ever, man,” Derkack said. “Obviously he talked about I watch a lot of film. I love watching it. I think it’s one of those things, I think I know them as good as anybody knows them.”
Obviously, something clicked at practice. The Scarlet Knights didn’t look like world-beaters Wednesday night, and yes, their 41.7 percent shooting from the field was a season low, but they capitalized on the outside with 7-of-17 3-point shooting in a 74-63 win over Merrimack to improve to 4-0.
In last night’s postgame, Pikiell indicated that Derkack was indeed a big help behind the scenes.
“We didn’t have a lot of days to prepare and it is very unique,” Pikiell said. “Jordan, after he’s done playing, he’s gonna play for a long time, he should think about coaching. He has a really good mind for basketball. He was well in tune to what they were gonna try to do. It’s one thing to be prepared, it’s another thing that you gotta go and face a different kind of defense like they have. … To have him as part of the game plan was very helpful.”
Ace Bailey, who put up 23 points and 10 rebounds in his second collegiate game, was available to the media postgame for the first time after dealing with cramping the night of his debut against Monmouth. Bailey called playing for the fans at the RAC a “blessing” and revealed that for at least 30 minutes at a recent practice, Pikiell and his staff drilled rebounding – a major issue all of last season that began seeping through this year as well.
“We’re tired, we’re beating each other up – rebounding, rebounding, rebounding,” Bailey said.
Bailey was Rutgers’ best rebounder on Wednesday night, and I mean more than just in terms of the box score. The Scarlet Knights truly may have lost a game like this with last year’s team – a plucky opponent throwing something different at them, with one player on fire on the offensive end. But Bailey’s pure, undistilled talent rose above the fray and he just flat-out played better than everyone else he was competing with for rebounds, getting two hands on the ball, something Rutgers has seemed allergic to at times.
Bailey’s best moment of this game was a highly difficult turnaround jumper from the corner in the second half. Though a long two instead of a three, it had the fans oohing and ahhing and teammate PJ Hayes IV putting his hands on his hand in faux disbelief.
Bailey was asked what he was thinking when that shot went down, and with a smile he deadpanned, “Just get back on defense.”
Merrimack coach Joe Gallo, a Milltown native who played at Princeton Day School, deserves a quick shout-out here after his Warriors played both Princeton and Rutgers close. I spoke with Gallo over the summer when previewing the MAAC for Lindy’s; the Warriors are entering their first season in the conference after finding a ton of success transitioning from Division II to the NEC. It didn’t feel crazy to pick Merrimack sixth in the 13-team conference when I saw which players were coming back and the success the program has had with its annoying defensive style; it could turn out that sixth was actually too low.
“As a Jersey guy, I’ve told Coach Pikiell I’m always rooting for them,” Gallo said. “It’s really cool to see the program where it’s at now. When I hear the ‘On the Banks of the Old Raritan,’ I get reminiscent of the old days. To me, it’s cool.”
One last note: With the win, Rutgers slipped two spots to No. 67 in KenPom’s ratings. This is officially A Thing, a theme of the season I’m going to track. Rutgers started the year 63rd in the KenPom ratings – which aren’t just a hobby horse of mine but a real number that appears on NCAA Tournament team sheets – and because RU has only faced weaker competition and didn’t blow any of the last three teams out, it’s getting dinged after each game.
Things will change in roughly a week when the Scarlet Knights face Notre Dame and Alabama. Whether they change for better or worse, we’ll just have to find out.