PISCATAWAY, N.J. – The Rutgers men's basketball team was defeated in the final few seconds by the Lafayette Leopards on Monday night at Jersey Mike's Arena.

Senior forward Ron Harper Jr. hit a go-ahead three-point pull up shot from the top of the key to put the Scarlet Knights up 51-50 with 30 seconds remaining on the clock.

On the next possession, Lafayette point guard Tyrone Perry passed to an open Kyle Jenkins who sunk the game-winning three-point shot from the wing to give the Leopards the lead with 2 seconds remaining on the clock.

"We have to figure out a way to keep improving," head coach Steve Pikiell said. "I thought we had really good looks, I'll watch the tape. But we certainly can't shoot that percentage from three when you get open looks. But we'll continue to plug away. I think a lot of pride, and getting better always as a team, we certainly have to. But we'll continue to fight. Very thankful for all the fans that showed up today. Thankful for Paul's effort too on the floor. We've just got to continue to get better."

The Scarlet Knights were out-rebounded 42-29 on the night and shot 4-for-26 from three-point range in the game.
 
Leo O'Boyle led the way for Lafayette with 18 points and shot 8-for-9 from the free throw line. Forward Neal Quinn added 12 points and Perry scored eight on (3-10) shooting.

Center Cliff Omoruyi was a bright spot for RU as he scored 14 points and fell one rebound shy of a double-double.

Omoruyi brought the Scarlet Knights back into the game with two dunks in the second half. The Leopards went of their largest scoring-run of the night with eight consecutive points with 12:53 remaining in the game. The game swung back-and-forth throughout the night with 10 total lead changes. Rutgers took a 29-28 lead into halftime.

Harper Jr. scored 13 points and added four rebounds. Fellow starter Paul Mulcahy had 10 points, six rebounds and three assists. Point guard Geo Baker played 26 minutes and had to leave the game due to injury in the second half. Forward Aundre Hyatt scored six points for the Scarlet Knights in his first start of the season.

Rutgers will be back in action on Saturday as the team heads to Amherst to take on the UMass Minutemen at the Mullins Center at 2:00 p.m.



Postgame Quotes: Nov. 22, 2021 vs. Lafayette

Rutgers Head Coach Steve Pikiell 

Opening Statement:  

"I want to thank the fans today for coming out and really kind of helping us, trying to will us to win. Disappointing. But give Lafayette credit. When they need to make a big play down the stretch, they made that big shot, we made a big shot. And the last two games have come down to a couple of stops and we weren't able to get it. But we obviously have to play much better. We're a little banged up right now, too. We have to figure out a way to keep improving. I thought we had really good looks, I'll watch the tape. But we certainly can't shoot that percentage from three when you get open looks. But we'll continue to plug away. I think a lot of pride, and getting better always as a team, we certainly have to. But we'll continue to fight. Very thankful for all the fans that showed up today. Thankful for Paul's effort too on the floor. We've just got to continue to get better. 
 
On the team's start to the season:  
 
"I think we're a lot better than this. Obviously, we lost two one possession game. So, you know, I'd like to be 5-0, that's where I thought we'd be right now. But we're not there. And there's nothing you can do about the past. You only can work on what you need to do to get better in the future. We'll do our film. We'll keep working. We can get some new guys into the rotation. Hopefully Geo is okay. Ron's back is bothering him too, right now. So hopefully those guys can get healthy for us. And we just got to figure out a way to score some more points. Our defense was more than respectable, holding that team to 53 points. But our offense has to get better. We have to start making some shots. They had 23 turnovers, so we worked hard in the game, obviously, but we were a possession short, a stop short. We just didn't make shots. And we'll have nights like that. And we'll have a stretch here where we make a lot of shots too. I'll watch the tape again. I thought we did get some good open looks and then we'll go from there. I didn't like the rebounding numbers. Because I thought even when we're missing in the past, we would crash the boards and get second shots. We did a little bit in the second half, but just got to played better. We need more energy. And it's on me. It's on me as the coach and I'm fully aware of that. And I stand by that I like this team a lot. I really do. I like these guys. We got to figure it out. We got to get better." 
 
On the team mentality: 

 "These guys want to win as badly as anybody. And our fans haven't seen a lot of home losses, that's for sure in a long time. But you have seasons and you have games where you are going to lose, right? It's a tough sport, it's hard to win a basketball game and everyone thinks it's easy. It's really hard. Lafayette ran us around, you got to give them credit, they made that big three at the end. We had some open threes just like that and we missed them, and they made them. When you put the ball in the basket the way that they do, they're dangerous team to play. And he's a heck of a coach. Everyone will talk about Rutgers, but these other teams play hard and they compete and they want to win too. You have to give Lafayette credit. Coach O'Hanlon has been doing this a long time, give him a lot of credit. They made shots and they made plays when they had to. We took that lead quickly, but we have to get a stop on that last possession. We gave ourselves a chance to win and we didn't finish the job." 
 
On Cliff Omoruyi: 
 
"Cliff is getting better. He did a good job of staying out of foul trouble today. He's been getting in foul trouble. Their center was big, he was seven feet, he was big and so we needed Cliff on the floor to guard him. Cliff is a good worker. We have a lot of good workers. We just have to get better together. And we will. That's what my job is." 
 
On the rotation:  
 
"Brandin Knight reminded me the other day that some of these guys haven't played any real college basketball yet. There was the COVID year. We're young. Jaden Jones is going to be good. We've been playing a lot of guys that haven't had a lot of actual experience. So we really depend a lot on Paul, Geo, Ron and Caleb. Those are our experienced guys. We got to get used to it and they have to be able to play in these kinds of environments and they have to understand that you know down the stretch you have to get stops. We gave up a couple of backdoor cuts little late in the game. We came out of two timeouts and said 'no backdoor cuts, no backdoor cuts.' But they have to live it." 
 
On the center minutes:  
 
"I wanted to play small. I thought we could stretch them out a little bit. And I wanted Oskar Palmquist in, who could shoot the ball. I wanted him in the game. I kind of liked that. Then when Cliff got a little fatigued, I went with Dean Reiber. I like Dean a lot. I like Ralph too. I just thought it was a better game for those guys because of the way he played he was a unique big man, he's kind of a point guard. So I went with that. On Aundre Hyatt, he's been playing well, I wanted to give him some minutes and add some defense to our bench. But he got in some foul trouble as well." 
 
 Lafayette Head Coach Fran O'Hanlon

On the win:  

"It's awesome. To come in here, we haven't been winning. That team down in Carolina (Duke) gave us a lesson the other day, but they're probably going to give a lot of people lessons. Just a great win for us. I mean, we played Cornell really tough, we lost by two. Sometimes those games help, we went to the end of the game, we had the ball, we threw it away. We lost by two. So today, we're in tight game. We led the whole way. I thought 'Jesus, it would be tough to lose after leading the whole time'. Kyle Jenkins was left open at the end, he had a wide-open shot, he's a terrific shooter and he dropped it down." 

On the team's resiliency at the end of the game:  

"That says a lot about our team. We needed a win. Our schedule has been the schedule from hell here, these first six games, five of them on the road. At yesterday's practice, I could tell, our guys are exhausted from playing so many games and traveling. We got it together today and we really had a great showing. 

On the team's defense:  

"Our zone, we really packed it in, we made it hard for them. We played their shooters. And then it becomes contagious. They started missing and you could see them getting really tight. Even at the end with who was going to take the shot for them. I've seen it happening with my teams, I've seen it happening to other teams, they would just get tight. It was probably a closer game than they expected and then all of a sudden it's gone down to the wire."