Rutgers was a primetime snub according to Dick Vitale, the former college basketball coach and ESPN analyst surprised to see Rutgers not make the NCAA Tournament.
Rutgers, with a regular season record of 18-13 (10-10 Big Ten), won in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament (against bubble team Michigan) before losing by five points to eventual champion Purdue. Rutgers came into Sunday with a NET Ranking at No. 40, considerably better than several teams that were picked at-large by the NCAA Tournament.
And yet somehow, Rutgers was left out in the cold by the NCAA Tournament. In reacting to some snubs that didn’t make sense, Vitale on Sunday night said he doesn’t understand how North Carolina State made the NCAA Tournament over Clemson and Rutgers.
“Another team I thought, it has to be Heartbreak Hotel a little bit, because I think everybody thought they’d be in… out of the Big Ten – Rutgers,” Vitale said on ESPN on Sunday night.
“Rutgers beats Purdue at Purdue – not many people go there and do that. They had the other wins in terms of Maryland and the other people in their conference. I thought that Rutgers possibly could have got it.”
Vitale was a former Rutgers basketball assistant from 1971-73 before moving to become a head coach at Detroit (and then in the NBA with the Detroit Pistons). Born in Passaic, N.J., Vitale is one of the most high-profile analysts in college basketball.
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