Rutgers last NCAA tourney coach confident this team will do what his didn’t

IT HAS taken Rutgers 30 years to dance the March Madness dance again, and the last man to take the Scarlet Knights to the NCAA Tournament will be cheering them on from his Florida home.

“Clemson’s a good team,” Bob Wenzel told The Post, “but Clemson wasn’t the best team in the ACC. They’re kind of similar in style of how they play. They’re not overly big, which is a good thing for Rutgers. There’s a couple of teams in the [Big 10] that play kind of like Clemson, so they’re not doing anything that Rutgers hasn’t seen. I don’t think you do anything special, you just do what you do, and play your ‘A’ game.

“If they win that game, they’ve got Houston, and Houston is very good, but they’re not Baylor, right? They’re not Gonzaga. So yeah, I think they’ve got a shot to beat Clemson, I think they’ve got a shot to beat Houston, assuming Houston wins [against Cleveland State]. Houston is a very toughminded team also. That game would be very, very physical, maybe foul trouble determines the winner.”

Wenzel — a 1971 Rutgers grad — has been impressed with the program Steve Pikiell has built, and heartened by the way the RAC was rocking in 2019 pre-pandemic.

Thirty years is a long time between March drinks.

“I think it’s a point of pride, big-time, for them to say, ‘Hey, we made it!’ It’s a significant accomplishment, there’s no doubt about that. It’s a breath of fresh air, right?” Wenzel said.

Rutgers is the 10 seed against seventh-seeded Clemson in the Midwest Region.

“I like their toughness,” Wenzel began, “I like their togetherness, they play with passion, when they’re down, they seem to play harder. So they got all the intangibles that you would want. Their depth is a good thing for them.

“They have shot-blocking with Myles Johnson, they have perimeter scoring — they’re not a great 3-point shooting team but it comes in spurts, it comes on and off — and they penetrate to the basket very well.”

Wenzel, who was hired in 2014 by the Big Ten Network, offered his thoughts on three Rutgers stars:

Geo Baker: “He’s very experienced. He has a great crossover dribble and he does it illegally, but gets away with it. He’s got a good pull-up jump shot, he likes the big moments.”

Ron Harper Jr. : “Harper has really progressed. I think he’s worked his way into an outstanding Big Ten player. His versatility is very important. He’s strong, so when he takes the ball to the basket, he can absorb fouls. From 3-point range he can shoot it, and he rebounds the ball

well. He’s just a good allaround forward.”

Jacob Young: “I was at a thing once and [former Florida State football coach] Bobby Bowden was speaking and somebody asked him about this really fast kid, and he said, ‘Well the good news is he’s like a Maserati. The bad news, he has no steering wheel.’ I’m not saying that’s precisely what Young is, but his explosiveness they need, and when he’s going good, he’s really going good. And his decision-making has improved since he’s been at Rutgers.”

Head coach Steve Pikiell is to basketball at Rutgers now what Greg Schiano is to football.

“I think he has a way about going about things is appealing to players, and it’s competitive, so everybody has to be at their best at all times,” Wenzel said. “I think he’s a good game coach, he sees matchups and he’s got a thousand plays, and when he sees something, he calls a play for a guy.”

Wenzel remembers his 1991 team fondly, but his Scarlet Knights let a nine-point lead slip away against Arizona State in the second half of their first-round game, and had an inbounds pass with 2.5 seconds left under the basket stolen down two and lost, 79-76.

“We were disappointed, which was a good sign, right? You don’t want to just get there, you want to do something when you get there,” Wenzel said.

Rutgers’ last NCAA Tournament win came in 1983 against Southwest Louisiana.

This team can end that drought. “They played in the best league in the country this year, and they were competitive all throughout, and they beat Illinois,” Wenzel said. Then he added: “But they lost to Nebraska,” and laughed.

Thirty years later, Bob Wenzel says:

“It’s good for me, because now I’m not the answer to a trivia question anymore — who was the last guy who took Rutgers, right?”