Rutgers makes First Four as N.J. gets trio into March Madness
Rutgers, Seton Hall and Saint Peter's are going dancing, meaning New Jersey has three teams in the bracket for the first time since 2004.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Rutgers Scarlet Knights didn’t have to sweat it out throughout the Selection Show.
The bubble darlings, uncertain that they would make a return trip to the NCAA Tournament, were one of the first teams to pop up in the first region Greg Gumbel revealed on Selection Sunday, the West Region. Rutgers ranked as the 44th overall seed, one of the last four at-larges in, and will face former Big East foe Notre Dame in the First Four for an 11 seed on Wednesday night.
Steve Pikiell – fresh off signing a contract extension through 2030, already his third extension at Rutgers – appeared simultaneously relieved about the selection and confident about the coming weeks.
“This really is our third one, too, our third NCAA,” Pikiell said. “I know we don’t get any credit. We won 20 games that first year, three years ago. COVID cut it short.”
Pikiell has a point. In another universe, we would be talking about Rutgers’ third straight trip to March Madness after the program’s previous NCAA drought extended back to 1991.
There will be time to discuss what the coach can do when the program enters the post-Ron Harper Jr./Geo Baker/Caleb McConnell era. For now, Rutgers is doing something plenty of teams on the outside will be envious of: dancing.
“When we play Rutgers basketball, we have an opportunity, as we’ve proven,” he said. “We beat No. 1, we beat No. 11, we beat No. 12, we beat No. 13. We went on the road, Senior Night at Indiana. This team has done some good things. I’m very confident in this group.”
Zooming out, it means Rutgers and Seton Hall will play in the NCAA Tournament in the same year for the first time since 1991. (Ironically, they’ll be in the same first-weekend site, San Diego, if Rutgers advances out of the First Four.) And with Saint Peter’s MAAC championship, New Jersey has three teams in the bracket for the first time since 2004, something I mused over way back in October.
It could have been four teams, but New Jersey programs were not spared of the heartbreak of Champ Week. Princeton, the Ivy League regular season champion, lost by two to Yale in Sunday’s title game here at Harvard. (More on the Tigers later.)
Some logistical basics before we continue diving in:
11 Rutgers vs. 11 Notre Dame, First Four, Wed. March 16, 9:10 p.m. ET, truTV
If Rutgers wins: 11 Rutgers vs. 6 Alabama, West Region, Fri. March 18, 4:15 p.m. ET, TNT
8 Seton Hall vs. 9 TCU, South Region, Fri. March 18, 9:57 p.m. ET, truTV
15 Saint Peter’s vs. 2 Kentucky, East Region, Thu. March 17, 7:10 p.m. ET, CBS
Rutgers could have made its Selection Sunday wait a little more comfortable if it hadn’t gone one-and-done at the Big Ten Tournament. Then again, two notes on that: One, that loss to Iowa looks a lot more understandable after the Hawkeyes went on to win the whole darn thing. Bank-shot buzzer-beater on Saturday aside, that team is on fire (I told you last week they’d be a sleeper to win), and if anything, it makes Rutgers’ 48-46 win over them in January that much more impressive. Two, Iowa won all those games and still received a seed two lines lower than Wisconsin, to give one example. The committee chair basically spelled out in his CBS interview that the committee isn’t putting much weight at all on the results of Champ Week, outside which teams are sealing auto bids.
Seton Hall also bowed out of its conference tournament about where expected. It could barely rebound against lowly Georgetown last Wednesday and those troubles continued to follow the Pirates in their loss to UConn. Former Pirates recruiting target Adama Sanogo made easy work of them for the second straight meeting.
I misplaced my notes, but I believe The Athletic’s bracket watch had Seton Hall as a 7 seed as of Sunday and ESPN’s bracketology had it as a 9. Split the difference, and the Pirates’ 8 seed is not so surprising. I can tell fans and observers thought it should have been higher, but what teams ahead of them can you point to and say, “The Pirates were definitely better than them over the course of the season?” After all, the committee ranked them one overall spot higher than Creighton and three higher than Marquette, making the Pirates the fourth-highest seeded Big East team, a very favorable rank.
At the end of the day any seed displeasure is a reaction to the fact that Seton Hall is likely to run into Arizona in the second round – not only one of the best teams in the country, but a matchup nightmare.
First, the Pirates must get past a TCU team that made some noise in the Big 12 this year and is headed up by Jamie Dixon, a widely respected coach around the sport.
“We’re very similar,” Kevin Willard said of the Horned Frogs. “They defend the three really well, they rebound the basketball really well. They have excellent guard play. They’re very different from a lot of teams this year, they’re not overly old. They have some really good young players.”
———
Props to Saint Peter’s, who has Rider to thank for clearing Iona out of the way in the MAAC Tournament last week. The Peacocks trounced Fairfield and Quinnipiac before taking down Monmouth in Saturday’s final, 60-54. That gives them the momentum of a seven-game winning streak entering the tournament, though playing Kentucky will be an extremely tall task.
KC Ndefo and his defensive prowess earned him MAAC championship MVP, with four blocks to go with seven points and seven rebounds. Doug Edert of Nutley scored 20 points off the bench in the championship game and joined teammate Matthew Lee, Monmouth’s Shavar Reynolds and Walker Miller and Rider’s Dwight Murray on a nearly-all-Jersey all-tournament team.
Farewell to Monmouth. I might need to dedicate a future newsletter to putting a bow on the Hawks’ final season in the MAAC. (George Papas’ nine free throws in the final minute of Friday’s semifinal to stave off Rider might deserve their own “30 for 30.” Really, I’m sure someone out there would watch.)
———
Finally, we have Princeton, which toughed out a 77-73 win over Cornell in the semifinal game Saturday to make it to Sunday’s final, a win away from its first NCAA bid since 2017. But it’s a cruel sport sometimes. One of the most efficient shooting teams in the country couldn’t get much to fall against Yale.
“I think we were getting good shots and we had to be more confident,” Ethan Wright said. “Just myself, I was passing up some good ones because I missed a couple. It’s hard to keep shooting when they’re not going in.”
Yet Princeton stormed back after the Bulldogs went up by nine with 59 seconds remaining. Wright made a three and Jaelin Llewellyn hit two more... the very definition of “too little, too late.”
Amid everything that Ivy League athletes and coaches endured during the pandemic, not being able to compete when the rest of Division I was, this loss especially stings.
“Feels a little bit like the end of the world,” coach Mitch Henderson said. “But we can’t let that affect what we did. It’s a terrific team and I’m really proud of them.”
“I have no doubt we could have won games in the NCAA Tournament,” he added.
The selection committee might have shared that belief. Bracketologists projected Princeton as a No. 13 seed as of Sunday morning. It could be preparing to play Providence at Buffalo right now. Anyone who’s watched the Tigers this season knows that’d be a competitive game.
Instead, Princeton will go to VCU on Tuesday at 7 ET and tip off the first round of the NIT.
———
That’s all I’ve got for this morning. It was a pleasure to spend the weekend at Harvard covering several exciting basketball games. If you’re interested, I also wrote this feature about Penn guard Jelani Williams for Mid-Major Madness — and if you don’t know about Jelani’s inspiring story, it’s absolutely worth a few minutes of your time.
No telling when the newsletter will be back. Thursday morning seems like a good bet. After that, we will see what Rutgers and Hall do and play it by ear. First, I need to get back to Jersey. Enjoy filling out those brackets!