PISCATAWAY, N.J. – No. 15 Rutgers men's basketball (7-4, 3-4) lost to Ohio State (9-3, 3-3), 79-68, on Saturday afternoon at the RAC.
Jacob Young scored 15 of his game-high 19 points in the second half, but the Buckeyes held on down the stretch to deliver the Scarlet Knights just their second home loss of the season.
Caleb McConnell (12) and
Ron Harper Jr. (11) joined Young in double figures.
RU chipped into an early first half OSU lead with a 10-0 scoring run, as a four-point play from McConnell followed by a jumper from Harper Jr. gave Rutgers a 23-18 lead with 8:21 left before the break. However, Ohio State countered with its own 13-0 lead to take a 42-30 lead into halftime.
The Buckeyes extended their lead to more than 20 before the Scarlet Knights settled in the second half. Rutgers made a strong push over the final 10 minutes, a 23-9 run that saw a layup from Young in the final minute cut OSU's lead to single digits. Ohio State would make its foul shots in the final seconds to hold on to the win.
Next up for Rutgers is a home game on Friday against No. 8/10 Wisconsin.
- Geo Baker passed John Somogyi to move into 30th place on Rutgers all-time scoring list.
- Baker played in his 100th career game and has scored 1,111 points as a Scarlet Knight.
- Jacob Young scored 19 points. He has scored double-digits in 10 straight games.
- Playing in his third game of the season after missing the first eight contests with a back injury, Caleb McConnell scored a season-high 12 points. It marked the first time he scored in double figures since Feb. 1, 2020 against Michigan at Madison Square Garden.
- Ron Harper Jr. scored 11 points. He has scored double-digits in every game this season.
- Rutgers benefited from a 36-20 advantage in points in the paint.
Gallery: (1-9-2021) Men's Basketball versus Ohio State
Rutgers Head Coach Steve Pikiell
Opening Statement: "Ohio State played really well today, I want to congratulate them. Coach (Chris) Holtmann does a great job, they were real physical in the first half with us, that hurt us. They're well coached, I thought they made some really difficult shots, so tip of the hat to them. I thought we kept grinding, even at the end I liked the last 11, 12 minutes, I thought that was Rutgers basketball and unfortunately you have to play 40 minutes in this league, and we'll get ourselves to that point. We have a few days off now to get prepared for a really good Wisconsin team. Our guys grinded down the stretch, I was proud of them for that and we got to continue to do a better job on the backboard, a problem tonight, they (Ohio State) do a great job of rebounding, we're (Rutgers) minus 14 on the glass and then again, the free throw line is always a factor in these games, and we can't give up points like that at the free throw line."
On Player Rotation: "Our guys were tired first of all and I need to play my bench and those guys have been really good. They've been working hard in practice and they came in and gave us some good energy and stuff and it's a long season too, I need to get those guys involved. The earlier you get them involved it's easier to get them involved later in the game, but our guys were tired and when you play these basketball games against these physical kinds of teams, you need to sub guys and give guys a minute here and there. The kind of defense I want to play is hard to play it the right way and log a lot of minutes, so I thought that was something that we went into the game wanting to do when we got our bench involved early."
On Ohio State's First Half Run: "I just thought really physical, they went on a stretch when they really made shots. I mean they posted us up, we didn't do a great job of digging down, we did in the second half a much better job coming to help, but they made some tough shots down that stretch, but got to keep grinding, every team goes on a run during the course of it, we went on our run late If the game was a little bit longer maybe our run would change the game, but they had a really good run there and we used a few timeouts there to try and break it but they were feeling pretty good."
On Recent Losing Skid: "This is the league that we play in so playing great teams, we've got to get healthy, 100% healthy, but these guys are good guys. We'll keep working, that's what we do, we get better, we improve, it's six days to work on Wisconsin and you know we're right in the league where you need to be. I don't know if any team besides Michigan who is undefeated in this conference, so we've got to get them up and ready and we showed some good signs of doing some different things today when we got down. I don't think they put their heads down, I thought they grinded through it. Having Caleb (McConnell) obviously back helps us so we're starting to feel our rotation out a little bit, but we'll come back to work, we'll get better, we got to play 40 minutes. Tough stretch, playing really good basketball teams, most of them are ranked. You're gonna have win streaks and losing streaks and you've got to be really good when the obstacles, easy when you are winning, you got to be good when you're not and you've got to keep your team right on track and these guys are good players and they're tough kids."
On Geo Baker: "Geo's had stretches too, Geo's good, love him so Geo will be fine, it's tough. You can't always make shots every time the ball does not go in. He can do a lot of things for us and I never predicate anything on those percentages, I predicate a lot of how our players play and how hard they play and doing other things, but you're going to have stretches during the course of your career. He certainly has and so has every player in the country, so he'll be in the gym, he'll continue to work it. I think his health is getting better and Geo is a good basketball player and he'll be fine."
On Rutgers Lack of Attack: "I mean first of all credit to the other teams, whatever your strength is they're not just going to let you do it, but obviously rebounding, it's become an issue like you got to rebound to be able to run and the more you foul, now they are shooting free throws, so you can't run on those possessions either so it's hard to run off of free throws. We got to continue to push the ball when we can, but a lot of that is about stops and we obviously, giving up 79 points tonight, didn't have a lot of stops in the basketball game. Rebounding factors into how much you can run, and teams know that we like to run so they are not going to let us get up and down the court the way we want."
On Caleb McConnell: "He's been through a lot and he's a great kid. I mean he's had a year off so then we threw him right in the middle of the league season, so he didn't have any games to kind of get his legs under him, but he's a good leader for us, he's tough. He's been playing really well too in practice; I think better days ahead for him as he just continues to get game shape, game intensity and game physicality and all that. It was nice, he gave us a huge lift today in a lot of areas."
On Team Leadership: "These guys are great. They really are, I mean you're going to have these kinds of stretches, these guys come to practice every day, they come in watch film. The balls start going in and we'll start rebounding, defending better, I'm very confident in that. We are giving up too many points and we gotta solve the free throw fouls, that has been a problem for us. We got good leadership, Myles (Johnson), these guys are positive, you see our bench we are involved, and I got a good coaching staff. We will keep plugging, that's what we do."
Ohio State Head Coach Chris Holtmann
Opening statement: "I've got a lot of respect for this Rutgers team. To come here, pandemic or not, and win on the road, was big. Anytime you win and beat a program the caliber of Rutgers, what Steve (Pikiell) has. He's done an amazing job here. He's got really good players, terrifically coached. I thought playing a top-15 team anywhere, you got to start well early, and we started well early. I give that starting group a lot of credit. They really started well early and gave us some life. We didn't finish the game like we need to, that's my fault, but we certainly played well for large stretches."
On Jimmy Sotos: "I don't want to get specific on it right now. I think as much as anything he's really disappointed just because of what he felt like, how he was playing. I think he wanted to continue that. So we'll get him all the tests, evaluate and we'll know more here in a couple of days."
On guard play: "I thought (Jimmy Sotos) played really well. I thought he defended well. I thought he created offense with his ability to get in the lane. I thought his decision making was good. I thought Justice's (Sueing) decision making was good as well. But I thought Jimmy settled us a lot of ways and he was able to keep their guards in front. I was really, really pleased. He dove for the ball, made an effort play there, hit the shoulder pretty good. But yeah, I was really pleased with the rhythm that that group played with on both ends."
On defense: "I thought defensively we were good, we were pretty locked in there. Their twisting of ball screens bothered us a little bit. They got downhill. (Jacob) Young got downhill a lot. They've got a lot of guys who can make shots, a lot of guys you can get to the rim. And obviously, you Ron Harper Jr., who's a tremendous talent at the four spot. I think we had to hang our hat there. To me, the biggest play in the game was our ability to score. When we were having trouble scoring and E.J. (Liddell) making that pass to Kyle (Ahrens), a little bit on the post trap. They were switching the defense a little bit, they were going zone to man, that bothered us a little bit, particularly without, without Jimmy in there. But I thought E.J. made a great pass great decision that gave us a little bit of a breather there with a couple minutes to go."
On physicality: "I think this league presents a lot of different styles, a lot of different ways in which teams play, the way in which they defend you sometimes defend you completely differently. If you're going to be a good team, you have to be able to play and attack people differently offensively and defensively in your system. I just think in general, certainly their physicality bothered us at Minnesota, but we also didn't attack them as well as we needed to, and that's my fault. I thought today our guys got into a good rhythm, but we made some shots too, don't want to overthink it. We were able to make some shots, which makes such a huge difference."
