Rutgers Men’s Basketball vs Penn Preview

Rutgers Men’s Basketball is set to play Penn on Saturday, as they are gearing up to play their last two out-of-conference matches against mid-major opponents before Big Ten play reconvenes in the new year. Their first game of this two-game slate is against a Quakers team that finished near the bottom of the Ivy League last season.

Penn has looked like a much different team this season under new head coach Fran McCaffery. McCaffery was the head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes when they won the Big Ten tournament back in 2022 and led them to several NCAA tournament appearances during his time in Iowa City.

The Quakers will be heading into Piscataway after a 12-day break, as they last played on December 8th against Lafayette. The last time Rutgers and Penn played one another in Basketball was during Rutgers’ undefeated 1975-1976 regular season, when the Knights won 95-80.

In terms of scoring, Penn’s leading contributor is forward Ethan Roberts with 18 points per game. However, he will most likely miss this game due to injury. With his absence, the role of leading scorer likely falls to forward TJ Power, who is averaging 15.0 points per game this season. Power also leads the team in rebounds per game, as he averages 7.6. The team as a whole shoots 44.5 percent from the field and 40.1 percent from three.

Penn rotates their big man role between Center Dalton Scantlebury and Forward Augustus Gerhart. Both are listed at 6-foot-9, with Scantlebury averaging 8.1 points per game and Gerhart averaging 6.2 points per game.

The biggest knock on the Quakers seems to be their defense. In their games against better competition, such as Villanova and Providence, Penn could not hold their opponent to under 90 points.

Both teams played American University earlier in the year. Penn lost to the Eagles by six while Rutgers beat them by nine.

Despite the Quakers coming from a lower level of play, they do have the offensive firepower to make this game interesting. A Penn player has scored 25 points or more in 5 games this season. Not so coincidentally, they won four out of those five games. The Knights will have to play good defense and handle the ball well to snuff out any probability for an upset. That is much easier said than done, as poor defense and turnovers have plagued Rutgers all year. In addition to that, both of these coaches are very familiar with one another, meaning that McCaffery knows how to build a tried and proven gameplan to counter the Knights’ tendencies. The talent and size differential do favor Rutgers; however, the gap between them isn’t as wide as would be expected between the two teams.

Rutgers’ game against Penn will tip off inside Jersey Mike’s Arena tomorrow at 8 pm. A live broadcast of the game will be available on BTN.