INDIANAPOLIS, IN. – The No. 4 seeded Rutgers men's basketball team was defeated by the No. 5 seed Iowa Hawkeyes 84-74 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament on Friday.

The Hawkeyes were fueled by 25 made free throw attempts on 27 attempts as well as 26 points from Keegan Murray, the game's leading-scorer. Murray shot (10-19) from the field, had eight boards and a pair of assists. Murray made all six of his free throws.

"Tip of the hat, Iowa's been playing great basketball," Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell said. "It's not the way I wanted to play today. I thought we got off to a good start, just couldn't finish the deal against a really good team, but Fran's a great coach."

Guards Jordan Bohannon and Tony Perkins each scored 16 points for Iowa in the victory.

Keegan's brother, Kris had nine points and made all four of his free throw attempts.  

"Keegan Murray was a problem for us from the opening tip, and they had it going," Pikiell said. "I thought we played like us for about 13 minutes in the second half and kind of clawed back in it, then could never get really back over the hump. Again, one of the huge keys was to defend without fouling and we fouled them a lot. We have got to play better."
 
For the Scarlet Knights senior Geo Baker led the way with 23 points and moved past RU legend Eddie Jordan for eighth on the Scarlet Knights all-time points list (1,636).

Baker shot (9-16) from the field (4-7) from three-point range, grabbed three rebounds and had two assists.

"We played hard, but we didn't play like Rutgers, which is defense," Baker said. "I thought they made some really tough shots. They have a lot of really good players. And I thought they made good adjustments. I thought we were attacking them man-to-man, they were in the zone, we got a little lost there. But it's not really the offensive end, we scored enough points, we just really didn't get any stops."

Four Scarlet Knights scored in double-figures. Center Clifford Omoruyi had 17 points and seven rounds. Junior guard Paul Mulcahy had 13 points and nine assists, to go along with six rebounds.


Senior forward Ron Harper Jr. had 13 points and was (5-16) from the field. Senior Caleb McConnell had eight points, three rebounds and a pair of steals.

Rutgers had 40 points in the paint and 14 of the team's first 20 points came from that area. Iowa outpaced Rutgers with 20 fastbreak points compared to RU's four.
Iowa got 18 points of production from the bench compared to zero from the Scarlet Knights.

Rutgers finishes off the season at an (18-13) record with large hopes to make noise in the 2022 NCAA Tournament.

"I feel like this team has proved itself, proved we've gotten better day in and day out," Harper Jr. said. "Every time we come off a tough loss, we always bounce back. So this team definitely deserves to play in March. We're a great team and I feel like we can make a lot of noise in March. We're just going to hope the selection committee sees us through, but we feel like we should definitely be playing."

The Scarlet Knights will be waiting for their names to be called on Selection Sunday this weekend in Piscataway.

"This group has been great all year long, they're warriors," Pikiell said. "We just didn't have enough today and that's on me, too. I've got to make sure to have these guys more like us. Today, there were minutes that we weren't us, and that's what bothered me the most, but that's on me. We'll be ready for the next one."