A senior and a freshman lift Rutgers to a sweet rivalry victory
While Cliff Omoruyi won MVP honors, Mawot Mag and Jamichael Davis gave Rutgers juice it had been missing in order to beat Seton Hall in the Garden State Hardwood Classic.
NEWARK – Rutgers needed a response.
Seton Hall had crept within 26-23 and was probing the Rutgers defense, looking for a bucket with three minutes left in the first half Saturday night. Kadary Richmond was doing what he does best and driving his way to the hoop, but Cliff Omoruyi knew he was coming.
In the fastest six seconds of the night, Omoruyi stuffed Richmond and Jamichael Davis got it out in transition, feeding none other than Mawot Mag for a layup. It launched a key 7-0 Rutgers run that ended with Omoruyi stuffing home a two-handed dunk, prompting the first “R-U!” chants of the night inside Seton Hall’s home arena.
It was fitting that Mag scored that particular fast-break basket. Because Rutgers needed a response in a larger sense, too. The Scarlet Knights hardly resembled themselves in beatdown losses to then-No. 24 Illinois and Wake Forest. This game was crucial for both teams for all the obvious reasons, but in Rutgers’ case in particular, the season could be over in a hurry if it couldn’t handle power-conference foes not named Georgetown.
Omoruyi wound up winning Joe Calabrese MVP Award honors by ending the night with 11 points, 13 rebounds and seven blocked shots. But it was Mag’s return from February’s ACL tear, combined with Davis’ phenomenal first collegiate start, that gave Rutgers the juice it had been missing to beat Seton Hall 70-63 in the Garden State Hardwood Classic.
Mag tore an ACL in Rutgers’ 61-55 win over Michigan State at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 4. Rutgers finished the season 3-8 without him, going from a probable single-digit NCAA Tournament seed to an NIT berth and loss to Hofstra.
He’d been cleared to play for a while but didn’t feel 100 percent until this week. “Of course he picked this game to come back, right?” Seton Hall coach Shaheen Holloway said postgame.
Mag is the best individual defender Rutgers has, at least now that National Defensive Player of the Year Caleb McConnell has graduated. You’ve heard him called a “glue guy.” He does a bit of everything to keep the team together.
Pikiell did not know how many minutes Mag would be able to play. It wound up being 24. He finished with four points, eight rebounds and many of those glue guy plays that don’t appear in a box score. He was the primary defender on Richmond and helped hold him to 8-of-18 shooting, including 0-of-2 from three.
“It just felt great,” Mag said. “It’s been a long journey, a lot of ups and downs throughout the rehab process, but my teammates and coaches were there for me. I really appreciate … everybody that helped me through the whole process. It was great to be out there. It was a long time coming, long overdue. It was great to go out there with my brothers and be out there and just have fun and just compete.”
Clearly as elated as Mag was Omoruyi, who needed to atone for a four-point, four-rebound night against Wake Forest on Wednesday.
“Just having my brother and my teammate, my roommate back, it feels good having him out there,” Omoruyi said. “And also, I defend well when I see defenders like that so it just boosted my emotions with my teammate coming back.”
“College basketball’s getting really old,” Pikiell said, speaking of Mag, “and when you don’t have a player who’s been through some wars and you’re playing with young guys, it’s not easy.”
That may be true, but Rutgers’ two young guys delivered performances to remember in their first taste of the Seton Hall rivalry.
You might expect the sharpshooting, four-star recruit Gavin Griffiths to have the kind of day he did. Griffiths, who’s already shown off with a 25-point game against Boston last month, was the first sub into the game and knocked down two 3-pointers on his first two touches of the basketball. He made it 3-for-3 a short time later after Seton Hall tied the game at 14.
But while Griffiths had less of an impact in the second half, Jamichael Davis only got better as the game wore on. Pikiell, besides inserting Mag right back into his starting lineup, also made the call to give Davis his first start in place of Derek Simpson at point guard.
A freshman starting on the road in a hostile, rivalry game environment? Davis wasn’t fazed.
After dishing three assists in the first half, Davis took over in the first minute of the second half by kicking a pass out to Aundre Hyatt for a 3-pointer, then knocking down his own three. All 11 of Davis’ points came in the second half, including 2-for-2 shooting from deep. He tacked on a game-high six assists and had one steal along with multiple other deflected passes.
Holloway said he “wasn’t shocked” Davis drew into Rutgers’ starting five, but the way he added offense on top of his energy on defense was another matter.
“We knew they had a couple guys who could make shots – that kid Griffiths could really shoot the ball, Hyatt, (Noah) Fernandes as well,” Holloway said. “But I didn’t anticipate, like I said, Jamichael Davis making those threes.”
Pikiell said Davis earned the opportunity with his recent stellar play. Over his prior three games, he had a 10:0 assist-to-turnover ratio.
“He’s a high-energy guy, he has tremendous toughness,” Pikiell said. “We just changed things up, and having Mawot – and then I loved how the guys that came off the bench responded. Every guy. Gavin was ready to play. Oskar (Palmquist) comes in, hits a 3. Derek does a great job down the stretch. (Antwone Woolfolk) grabs five rebounds.
“Having J-Mike in the lineup, he changes things. He’s super quick. Tonight he got people involved. He made shots and he’s got a chance to be a really good defender.”
After Seton Hall had won two straight in the series, Holloway expressed his disappointment over his team not treating Saturday with the utmost importance.
“I don’t think my guys understood the magnitude of this game,” he said. “All our new guys, they don’t know the rivalry and how important it is. Obviously, I think (Rutgers) did a good job making sure their guys understood that, but we didn’t, and I thought we came out and played a little timid. We weren’t aggressive.”
Davis and Griffiths may have been “new guys” too, yet they played like seasoned pros who had experienced the rivalry before.
“They were locked in, this group,” Pikiell said. “They know the importance of the game. We wanted to paint the state red and we felt like if we came in here and we were locked in and focused, I told these guys, ‘Put the phones away.’ You guys know how I feel about that stuff, and they did, thankfully. … To come in here and win says a lot about the work that these guys did and the focus that they had.”
The end result was Rutgers capturing the New Jersey-shaped trophy for the first time since 2019, and beating Seton Hall at the Prudential Center for the first time since 2013.
Will it change the course of Rutgers’ season? It’s hardly guaranteed, but we have seen this program forget some poor November and December results and clamp down on some of the best teams in the Big Ten, i.e. in 2021-22.
In fact, that was the season Mag began to have an impact. Now there are some talented freshmen watching and learning from his example.
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Thanks for stopping by this morning. Now that these teams play only once a year, the Garden State Hardwood Classic is the biggest date on the New Jersey college basketball calendar, and I’m lucky to have covered my third game in a row (even while working with a tight train schedule last night, thanks in part to the 8:40 tip!).
Let’s clean the glass, starting with more notes from Rutgers-Seton Hall.
Rutgers was without guard Austin Williams due to injury, so even with Mag back the Scarlet Knights played with a nine-man rotation. Williams was their most productive player in the first half against Illinois; the backcourt rotation will be better with him spelling Simpson, Davis and Fernandes. Pikiell said “Big E is coming, too,” referring to newcomer Emmanuel Ogbole, though the timeline for these players is unclear.
For Seton Hall, Richmond did his part with 21 points, nine rebounds and four assists. Dre Davis had 12 points and six rebounds. But Holloway said, “We got a couple of guys who gotta do more for us, and I’m disappointed in them.” You can look at the starting lineup and do some process of elimination to decide who he’s talking about.
Holloway said he wouldn’t tell Al-Amir Dawes not to shoot, despite his current slump. Dawes followed an 0-for-4 game against Baylor with 3-for-15 shooting from deep against Rutgers. He’s hovered close to 40 percent from the arc in each of his past three seasons.
The best non-Rutgers-Seton Hall story of the weekend came out of Monmouth. The Hawks trailed Northern Illinois by 19 points late in the first half. This was how that game ended.
“That was for my grandma,” Jakari Spence revealed postgame. “She just passed away on Thursday of last week and it was hard for me and my family. My dad told me to come out here today and do it for her. So when the ball left my hands, I just knew that was going in.” Monmouth is 5-4 and visits none other than Seton Hall on Tuesday.Saturday’s loaded college hoops schedule saw several previously unbeaten teams take their first loss of the season. Only eight Division I men’s basketball teams remain undefeated: Arizona, Houston, Baylor, Oklahoma, James Madison, Clemson, Ole Miss and Princeton. The Tigers can become the second team to reach 10-0 later today against Saint Joseph’s. A road game against the Philadelphia Big 5 champion will be their most challenging game in a while.