Rutgers shows it can win without injured star
PISCATAWAY » On Tuesday night, the Rutgers men’s basketball program proved it could win a big game without its best player.
Only time will tell how many more times it’ll need to do it.
Shortly after a very hard-fought 81-76 win over Purdue at the RAC, Scarlet Knights head coach Steve Pikiell said he’s “not sure” if superstar forward Ron Harper, Jr. will be available for his team’s big January 2 showdown against Iowa.
The highly-touted junior unexpectedly missed the nationally televised showdown against the Boilermakers, with a team statement coming out just an hour before tipoff revealing that he’d suffered an ankle injury in “a recent practice.” Harper joined his teammates on the floor on Tuesday night, and didn’t appear to have a pronounced limp of any kind, nor the sort of walking boot that teammate Geo Baker was sporting after he missed several games early this season with an ankle injury of his own.
Ironically, it was a finally healthy Baker, as well as junior guard Montez Mathis, who stepped up to help make up for Harper’s 23.4 points per game average; Baker dropped 19 points, but it was Mathis who contributed a career-high 25 to help show, along with a deeper-than-expected supporting cast, that Rutgers’ current 14th spot in the national rankings isn’t solely contingent on just one player.
“It was a gutty, gritty win for us,” Pikiell said. “Obviously, we need everybody. We miss (Ron), we miss Cliff (Omoruyi), we miss Caleb (McConnell), any guy that’s injured. Especially in this league, you need everybody. But, I thought our team, we responded the way we’re supposed to respond. The next guy was ready to play. Tip of the hat; Dean Reiber hasn’t played a lot of minutes and came in and gave us great minutes, Oskar (Palmquist) came in
and made some plays, (Mamadou Doucoure) came off the bench and had to wrestle with two of the biggest players in the conference. And then everybody else stepped up.
“Geo looked like Geo, Montez was spectacular and had just a terrific night. Jacob (Young), coming off a bad injury, plays 35 minutes and I can’t take him out. He has to guard Eric Hunter, who is one of the best point guards in the league and chase him around all
nights. It’s a good team win, with good toughness. But now we’ve got to get these other guys back and healthy and get ready for this next stretch here coming up.”
Truth be told, given that getting past Purdue was never a given, getting a similar result against the No. 10 ranked Hawkeyes without Harper, who legendary college hoops analyst Dick Vitale lauded as now being one of the “top prime time performers in the nation,”
would be an even bigger challenge.
“We just had that next man up mentality,” Baker explained after Tuesday’s win. “We’re a really good team, that’s what we believe. Every guy has the ability to step up and make plays, and you saw that today. We all believe in each other, Coach believes in everyone on this team and we just showed that today.”
It’s something they’ll have to keep doing just that if Harper is unable to go on Saturday afternoon.