It isn’t often that a Steve Pikiell-coached Rutgers basketball team loses the rebounding battle. And it isn’t often, as was the case on Saturday afternoon, that they doubled up by the opposition.
In a 76-58 home loss to No. 24 Illinois, there was a 55-27 disparity in rebounding. Most worrisome for Rutgers was that the Illini held a 19-9 advantage on the offensive glass, a stat that hasn’t traditionally been that way in the last four years under Pikiell.
Those second-opportunity points were tremendous for the Illini, as they staked themselves to an early lead on the road.
And while Rutgers held a 17:10 advantage in forced turnovers, it wasn’t enough to overcome Illinois’ clear edge on the boards.
“That’s the most turnovers they had so far this season but again, we just didn’t do what we needed to do on the backboards,” Pikiell told reporters after the game.
“We didn’t get our own offensive rebounds and we missed a lot and they manhandled us on the glass. You know I’m not happy with that, I know these guys I think this team is good we gotta figure that out obviously.
“When you’re playing a team that has size at every position, I knew that would be an issue for us but didn’t think it would be that kind of an issue. But tip of the hat, they had to go get them and they did and we had a few that came out of our hands and we had some offensive rebounds that just got taken from us and a lot of different things that happen when you don’t rebound effectively and they got us every which way on the backboards.”
Another troubling storyline to emerge from this game was the stat line from senior center Cliff Omoruyi. In Big Ten play, Rutgers needs Omoruyi to step up and be strong on both ends of the court.
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And while he did have nine rebounds and eight blocked shots, Omoruyi had just seven points in 3-of-10 shooting from the floor. It is the third time in seven games this season that Omoruyi hasn’t reached double-digit scoring.
“It always changes every year – when you are the top guy on the scouting report and they have a lot of time to prepare for you he is going to get that.,” Pikiell said
“He has to be better than the scouting report 0 we talk about that a lot. Cliff has to understand that guys are keying in on him when we throw him the ball in the post. We are getting better at not turning the ball over but the ones we have have been when we are trying to force it down to him. It is a team collective effort.”
Rutgers is now 5-2 (0-1 Big Ten) on the season.