Why is Rutgers struggling to rebound?
The Scarlet Knights give up too many offensive rebounds, a major outlier in their otherwise strong statistical profile on defense.
PISCATAWAY – Rutgers built a 42-32 lead over Stonehill early in the second half, and for a moment it appeared the Scarlet Knights were ready to pull away.
Then Todd Brogna hoisted up a 3-pointer for Stonehill and missed, but instead of a Rutgers defender getting two hands on the rebound, it went to Stonehill’s Chas Stinson. The Skyhawks reset, the ball made its way back to an open Stinson, and his ensuing 3-pointer launched a 13-0 run that put Stonehill ahead. It wasn’t till Derek Simpson’s heroic three with 14 seconds left that Rutgers was off upset alert, escaping with a 59-58 win.
Rutgers has a number of sore spots to address right now – easy for me to say one day after the Scarlet Knights shot 16-for-62 from the field and 22-for-35 from the foul line – but if they could make only one New Year’s resolution, it should be to overhaul their rebounding.
Rutgers fans know the poor results on the glass have been a recurring theme all season. At least one screamed “Rebound!” when Stonehill grabbed one of its 14 offensives boards Saturday.
The Scarlet Knights are allowing opponents to get 34.3% of their available offensive rebounds, a major outlier in their otherwise strong statistical profile on defense:
Finishing minus-13 on the glass in a win over Saint Peter’s should have tripped the alarms. Five days later, Illinois outrebounded Rutgers 55-27 in a runaway, and Wake Forest controlled the boards against the Scarlet Knights the next week.
Mississippi State met Rutgers Dec. 23 in Newark, a defense-versus-defense type of matchup. With Cliff Omoruyi forced out of the game for long stretches due to foul trouble, Rutgers was helpless to stop 6-foot-10, 280-pound Jimmy Bell Jr., who corralled a career-high 18 rebounds.
“It’s on me to figure out this rebounding thing,” Steve Pikiell said after Rutgers lost the battle on the boards 47-26.
So I asked Bell how Mississippi State had such an advantage there.
“It’s just the will to go to the glass,” Bell said. “We knew coming into the game they weren’t a great defensive rebounding team, so Coach (Chris Jans) just stressed that on us, offensive rebounding. All through the year we’ve been a good offensive rebounding team and today we listened to him and it worked out for us.”
Any coach game-planning for the Scarlet Knights could see it. Rutgers only outrebounded four opponents through its first 11 games: Boston, Bryant, Howard and Long Island.
And so we arrive at Saturday. Stonehill rostered nobody taller than 6-foot-8 and entered the game ranked 352nd in offensive rebound percentage (20.6%). Yet in the first half, Stonehill had more offensive boards (10) than Rutgers had on the defensive glass (nine).
Unlike the week prior, Omoruyi was able to play 32:33 Saturday. He grabbed 11 of his career-high 17 rebounds in the second half, when Rutgers, to its credit, rebounded better overall.
The final tally: Rutgers 48, Stonehill 46. And Stonehill scored 12 second-chance points off its 14 O boards.
“You know, we addressed it at halftime,” Pikiell said. “We knew about going into the game too, and we got a couple unlucky bounces. We got a couple that we had in our hands and we fell out of bounds, ball went out. We got to continue to get better on the backboards. That’s for sure.”
Rutgers doesn’t have enough frontcourt depth to compensate when Omoruyi is in foul trouble or otherwise ineffective. Against Mississippi State, Pikiell had to deploy Oskar Palmquist as an emergency five for part of the second half. But despite Omoruyi’s up-and-down season, he alone is not the entire problem, nor the entire solution.
When you watch this team enough, you see fewer two-handed rebounds and more bats and tips in the direction of a teammate, susceptible to be taken by an opponent. Guys often get boxed out. Sometimes no one is in the area to collect a long rebound – those missed 3-pointers that carom off the rim several feet back into play, rather than falling around the restricted area.
Pikiell cited the absence of freshman guard Jamichael Davis, who has a bone bruise in his leg, as a contributing factor to the latter. (Still, Davis hadn’t missed a game before Saturday.)
“When (Stonehill is) taking that amount of threes, there are long rebounds. J-Mike is a long rebound track-down guy,” he said. “We weren’t getting those long rebounds, we really weren’t. We talked a lot about it. We learned about it on film. Second half, we gave up four offensive rebounds, so we did a much better job. First half, 10.”
I asked Aundre Hyatt what he thought of the issue. His answer echoed Bell’s the week before.
“We just have to put an emphasis on attacking the glass every time. It’s an effort thing, and that’s what we’ve been harping on the past couple days,” Hyatt said. “I feel like we have good size, but we just have to have more people crashing and we have to have the guards get the long rebounds as well.
“But I feel like we’re in a good place and we’re gonna keep learning. It’s a really good team, really young team and I feel like we’re gonna take those steps and we’re gonna start Big Ten play well.”
Hyatt emphasized that his “effort” comment didn’t mean there was a lack of will. It was more a matter of stressing the fundamentals.
“I feel like this team’s bought in,” he said. “There’s no egos, we’re a pretty unselfish team. So we’ve just been talking to each other on and off the court, in and out of practice, just putting an emphasis on playing tough, being physical and just rebounding. That’s one of our biggest problems.”
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Thanks for reading, and happy new year!
Apologies for the abrupt change in plans after the Mississippi State game. Initially, I wanted to publish on Christmas Eve morning, then take off till Jan. 2. Circumstances out of my control led me to re-think whether I should push out something half-hearted on a morning most people aren’t checking their email, nor thinking about college basketball, when the topic would remain relevant a week later. I made the right decision, and now I’m back to my usual thrice-a-week content plan.
Some final notes and observations before we count down the hours and minutes till 2024:
Rutgers’ next game is at Ohio State, the site of a controversial loss last season where referees missed an out-of-bounds violation committed by Tanner Holden before he made the game-winning shot. This will be Rutgers’ first return to Columbus since. Hyatt told us that ending still sticks in the team’s craw – made worse by the Big Ten Conference’s apology afterwards – and he was going to remind his teammates how it was one of their toughest losses of last season. “Most definitely. Two people stepped out of bounds, and they counted the shot, but it’s what comes with it,” Hyatt said.
Princeton is 12-1. I wasn’t able to catch any of the Tigers’ 84-82 win over Delaware while traveling home from Rutgers, but Dalen Davis, Matt Allocco and Xaivian Lee secured the win at the foul line after Delaware charged back from a 12-point deficit in the final four minutes. Caden Pierce had his fifth double-double with team highs of 21 points and 10 rebounds, and Blake Peters shot 3-for-9 from three after emerging from a shoot slump against Bucknell, Furman, Drexel and Saint Joseph’s.
The Princeton women returned to action by throttling Vermont 67-47 Friday, and they’ll wrap up 2023 this afternoon at Le Moyne, new to Division I this season. If the Tigers hadn’t lost at Rhode Island, they’d be on a six-game winning streak and almost definitely still ranked in the AP Top 25. Kaitlyn Chen scored 17 at Vermont to surpass the 1,000-point mark at Princeton – and remember, she did so in just three seasons. Her freshman season of 2020-21 was wiped out by COVID-19.
Saint Peter’s beat Bucknell 67-58. The Peacocks have won five of six and take on MAAC titan Iona next. I’ll have more to say about them in Tuesday’s newsletter for paid subscribers.