BLOOMINGTON – Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Rutgers was in a battle of life or death, his season hanging by a thread in a tense game, on the road, with a riotous Senior Night mob mocking them and shaking the assembly hall at its base. We’re not sure, but we think we saw Ron Harper Jr. yawn.
Because somehow the Scarlet Knights, whose plug of their life support system hung from the socket several times, shocked the college basketball world once again.
This time they made key free throws on the site – imagine that! – Survived in the last seconds of throwing out the guard Paul Mulcahy and won another three-point dagger from Harper with 2.1 seconds left – a stunning Indiana, 66-63, to keep his NCAA hopes alive with a remaining regular-season game.
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You say it was a wild game? Let’s just say it was another Wednesday night for the Rutgers.
The Scarlet Knights again used defense and toughness to bring out an unlikely victory. After falling behind by seven in the half, Rutgers used the swarming and collapsing zone 2-3 to suffocate the Hoosiers in the second half, then returned to man to man to confuse them even more in the final seconds.
Rutgers (17-12) overtook Indiana 21-11 in the last nine minutes to create perhaps the most important adult day in the history of the program on Sunday, when the Scarlet Knights hosted Penn State in the opportunity to punch tickets from March Madness.
If you don’t have tickets yet, expect to get a second mortgage to buy them on the secondary market.
The victory is the fifth in a row for the Scarlet Knights over the Hoosiers (18-11). This improves their road record to 4-9, their record in games from quadrant 1 to 6-5 and keeps them in the race for a place in the top four in the Big Ten, which would win their first double farewell in the Big Ten tournament in the history of the program.
An already tense and energetic match rose to almost a brawl with 19.2 seconds left when Mulkahi, who controlled the ball, and Indiana guard Xavier Johnson became entangled in the corner. Johnson pushed Mulkahi off the Rutgers bench for a foul, but Mulkahi – disappointed with the Hussars and his 2-for-8 shot – responded with a forearm in the temple and was thrown out. Both teams made their two free throws, giving the Rutgers a 63-60 lead.
The hysteria for a fraction of a second was almost expensive. If he had just committed the foul and gone to the line, the game was probably over. Instead, Indiana retained possession after the free throws and defended Parker Stewart’s 3rd from the corner in 12 seconds until the end of the game, 63-63.
But after Rutgers refused to call a time-out, Harper asked for the ball at the entrance and calmly dribbled along the court before scoring a three-pointer from the left wing. He motioned to the audience the size of his “bow” and then bowed as the referees stopped the game to make sure it was a 3-pointer.
Harper then deflected a pass to the desperate entrances from under the Hoosiers’ basket to secure victory.
Harper led Rutgers with 19 points, senior guard Geo Baker added 13, and Omorui – overcoming a bad start in defense – added 13 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks, numerous modified shots and four big free throws in the last minute of the match. Rutgers returned to the game with Baker giving up to Harper for a pair of 3-hit points at the end of the second half.
The Scarlet Knights managed to slow down All-Big Ten striker Jackson-Davis, who scored 11 points in the first eight minutes, but only eight points in the last 32 minutes of the game, thanks to the suffocation zone.
Rutgers made his last nine free-throw attempts in the game, including six in the last two minutes to maintain his lead.
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Brian Fonseca can be found at [email protected].