PISCATAWAY, N.J. – After a five-game homestand at Jersey Mike's Arena, Rutgers men's basketball is set to head to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival. Playing in the tournament for the second straight season, RU is set for matchups against No. 20/17 Tennessee on Monday (1 pm, TNT), facing Notre Dame on Tuesday (1 pm, TNT) and a third game on Wednesday against a to be determined opponent.
The games will take place at MGM Arenas. Brandon Gaudin, Candace Parker and Nabil Karim will be on the TV call.
This will make the first time that RU has played on three straight days since the 2017-18 season, when RU made a Big Ten Tournament run to the Quarterfinals. In that stretch, RU played Minnesota on February 28, Indiana on March 1 and No. 8 Purdue on March 2.
Rutgers enters the game with a 4-1 record after a season-opening five game homestand featuring wins over Rider, Maine, Lehigh and American. RU is now away from the venue for the next three games and five of the next six games. The lone home game over the next 28 days is No. 1 Purdue visiting on December 2 following the Las Vegas trip. RU then trips to Ann Arbor to face No. 6 Michigan and is on the road this year in the annual Garden State Hardwood Classic against in-state rival Seton Hall.
Dylan Grant leads Rutgers at 16.6 points per game, and his 7.2 rebounds trails just
Emmanuel Ogbole (7.8). Grant has scored double-figures four times, already more than last season's total of three, and had two 20-plus point games, including a career-high of 28 against Lehigh.
Tariq Francis also has scored double-digits in four of the five games, with three games of 19-plus points. His 10 three-pointers lead the team. Dennis Badalau is second with nine.
Last season, Rutgers tripped to the Players Era Festival for the first time, with three games then in a Tuesday-Wednesday-Saturday format. The Scarlet Knights opened with Notre Dame, an 85-84 overtime win, then lost a pair of games to ranked opponents (No. 9 Alabama, 95-90, and No. 20 Texas A&M, 81-77).
Tennessee is 5-0 so far with wins over Mercer, Northern Kentucky, North Florida, Rice and Tennessee State. UT is coming off a 30-8 campaign that saw them advance to the Elite Eight. The team is fourth in the nation with 50 rebounds per game and ninth in field goal percentage defense (34.4% against).
Nate Ament leads the team at 18.8 pints per game, with Ja'Kobi Gillespie at 16.6. The duo are both on the top-50 watch list for the Wooden Award and were Preseason All-SEC selections. Ament is a freshman ranked as high as second nationally by On3 and a McDonald's All-American. Gillespie comes to UT from Maryland, where he was a Third Team All-Big Ten choice last year after two seasons at Belmont.
Felix Okpara, formerly in the Big Ten with Ohio State, had 20 points against Rice and is on the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Top 20 Preseason Watch List for top center in the nation and is the lone returning starter for UT. JP Estrella has been limited with a left leg injury, but averaged 14.0 points and 6.8 rebounds across his first 70 minutes of the season.
Rutgers and Tennessee have met twice previously, though not in 33 years, with a 2-0 advantage for the Volunteers. The squads first played on March 15, 1969, a 67-51 win for Tennessee in the postseason NIT at Madison Square Garden. Under head coach Bill Foster, RU entered that first matchup with a 21-3 record and on a 16-game winning streak, which were both then program records. Bob Greacen, playing his final game as a Scarlet Knight, scored a game-high 24 points for RU. Tennessee, under head coach Ray Mears, was led by 21 points from Bobby Croft, while Jimmy England added 19. The squads met again 23 years later in the opening game of the season, in the Preseason NIT on November 19, 1992. That game went to the Vols as well, 87-79, with the contest played in Piscataway. Under RU head coach Bob Wenzel, Mike Jones had 19 points, but Tennessee was led by 27 points from future First Round draft pick and New York Knicks star Allan Houston.
Notre Dame heads to Las Vegas with a 4-1 record and a game on Monday slated for 3:30 pm against Kansas. The Irish lost by one point at Ohio State, and defeated LIU, Detroit Mercy, Eastern Illinois and Bellarmine.
Through five contests, Markus Burton leads Notre Dame at 19.4 points per game. A Preseason First Team All-ACC selection, Burton averaged 21.3 points per game last season in 25 games, but was limited to just three minutes against the Scarlet Knights due to an injury in the contest that would cost him five weeks of action.
Notre Dame is coached by third-year bench boss Micah Shrewsberry, who RU is familiar with from his time in the Big Ten as the head coach at Penn State and as an assistant coach at Purdue. He is 1-4 all-time against RU as a head coach, both at Rutgers and Notre Dame.
Rutgers and Notre Dame were former BIG EAST conference members, playing annually from 1995 to 2013. The Irish lead the series 21-14.
Rutgers and Notre Dame meet at the Players Era Festival for the second consecutive season. That game went to overtime, where RU prevailed 85-84 behind 36 points and six assists from
Dylan Harper. The lone other meeting since splitting conferences in 2013 came in 2022, when the two teams met in the NCAA Tournament, playing in Dayton in the First Four, an 89-87 Notre Dame victory in double overtime.
