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December 14 Sheet

Rutgers (-1.5) at Princeton - 4:30pm Pacific
Fairly high on this Rutgers team. They return four starters from an 18-13 season of a year ago. Head coach Gary Waters is in his second season here and the team has looked good early on.

Few teams have a a trio of starting guards as talented as senior Jerome Coleman (21.8ppg, 2.3spg), junior Mike Sherrod (5.5ppg, 5.2rpg, 4.5apg, 2.2spg), and sophomore Ricky Shields (13.0ppg, 4.3rpg, 1.8spg). If you were keeping count these three average 5.3 steals a game between them! Senior center Kareem Wright lost a whopping 50 pounds in the offseason and has been much more active this year. Junior forward Herve Lamizana is a budding star (8.2ppg, 5.3rpg, 4.0 blocks, 20 points vs North Carolina). Rutgers has some active players off the bench including forward Sean Axani who was a starter last year.

The Scarlet Knights were incredibly close from upsetting the Tar Heels in North Carolina and advancing to the semifinals of the preseason NIT. Rutgers led by 11 with under 8 minutes to play but got some unfavorable calls and folded down the stretch losing by 4 points. They built a double digit lead in their next game at Temple as well, and this time held on for a 6 point win. They also played decent in a loss at Auburn this year so they have quality road game experience. At home Rutgers has been sensational in blow out wins over Marshall, Columbia, and most recently Fordham.

Princeton is clearly down this year. The Tigers inexcusably lost to a bad Florida International team at home three games back. In their next game they needed a 65 foot buzzer beater to beat a 1-4 Monmouth team. They beat a winless Lafayette team in most recent game. The Tigers have suffered some major attrition. They lost leading scorer Mike Bechtold as well as minute per game leader Ahmed El-Nokali to graduation. So three starters return, right? Wrong. Returning starting forward Dominick Martin opted to transfer out of the program, reserve forward Chris Klug quit the team, and key returnee F/C Konrad Wysocki (conference rookie of the year 2 years ago, played starters minutes last year) has not played a game yet this season due to a foot injury. The worst news came just recently that starting forward Andre Logan (second on team in scoring last year and this year) will miss the remainder of the year as he has not fully recovered from offseason knee surgery. Logan had averaged 32.3 minutes per game (team high) in first three games of the season. He will be sorely missed. This leaves Princeton with just one active starter from last years 16-12 team who trailed by 17 in the 2nd half before losing by 12 at Rutgers.

Princeton is said to have "sped up the offense" as they scored a season high 89 points in last game vs Lafayette. This would play right into the hands of Rutgers who will want nothing more than to play an uptempo game. Scarlet Knights love to harass with full court pressure and create turnovers. They do it very well (forcing 21 per game). Either way, they have too much talent, athleticism, and depth for Princeton to match up with. New Jersey locals report that Rutgers always brings a large contingent of fans for this game (almost making it a 50/50 crowd) which lessens the home court advantage significantly.

Rutgers  1 UNIT

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