By The Numbers, Rutgers May End Up As The Worst Major Conference Basketball Team Ever
Rutgers is winless in Big Ten play, and they deserve every bit of it. Advanced statistics more accurately capture the Scarlet Knights' historical futility.
Tuesday night's truly awful basketball game between Minnesota, 2-13 in the Big Ten, and Rutgers, 0-15 in the conference, will live forever in college basketball history. Not because of what happened on the floor—Minnesota won by 22—but because of what it means for Rutgers.With that loss, the Scarlet Knights became the first major conference team ever to drop out of the top 300 in the KenPom.com ratings, which have been active since 2001-2002. Rutgers currently ranks No. 301, a spot behind Longwood, which you definitely just learned is an actual school with an actual basketball team. Jerome Kersey went there. They're not any good, either, but they have only been in Division I since '04-05.
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Anyway Rutgers has three games left, which means the Scarlet Knights will very likely drop to 0-18 in the Big Ten, and fall even further in the KenPom ratings. We don't yet know just how bad they are, but it seems safe to say by now that Rutgers is truly the worst team to ever play college basketball in a power conference.
Even more amazing: it's hard to understand how Rutgers got this bad. Three years ago, the school was ranked No. 109 in KenPom, which is certainly not good, but also not close to historically awful. Even the first year of coach Eddie Jordan's tenure wasn't a huge disaster, as the Scarlet Knights finished the year ranked No. 166. Indeed, when Jordan was hired in 2013, it seems like a reasonable move—at least, after Jordan, who starred at Rutgers as a player, finally graduated from the college. He came in with a solid basketball pedigree—he was the point guard on the best team in school history, which made the Final Four in 1976, and previously had been a NBA head coach, as recently as 2010 for the Philadelphia 76ers.Somehow, Rutgers got worse in Jordan's second year, despite featuring proven seniors like Myles Mack and Kadeem Jack, and impressive sophomore Junior Etou. They were not good, and something of a bummer in the usual Rutgers ways, but they were nothing like the disaster that this year's team has become. After Mack and Jack both graduated and Etou transferred, however, the 2015-16 talent cupboard was fairly bare. Yet the eye test alone doesn't quite capture the Scarlet Knights' futility.
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How bad is Rutgers? Let's look at the how the team ranks nationally in some of KenPom's advanced stats:
Basically, there are only two things Rutgers isn't awful at: not fouling and free throw defense. Free throw defense, you're probably thinking. That isn't even a thing. Correct! One of the Scarlet Knights' only redeeming qualities is that their opponents happen to miss more free throws than expected, which essentially means Rutgers is getting lucky.In conference play, the Scarlet Knights have been even worse. They're last in the Big Ten in both offensive (89.9) and defensive (119.5) efficiency. Those numbers mean that over 100 possessions against an average team, Rutgers would lose by 29.4 points. On the other hand, at least Rutgers is No. 1 in tempo, apparently preferring to get its games over with as quickly as possible.How does this happen? It happens when roster doesn't have Big Ten-caliber players. According to KenPom's offensive efficiency statistics, some Big Ten teams have 10 or more players who are better than anyone on Rutgers:
The good news for Rutgers? There's almost no way the team can be this bad again next year, mostly because no team has ever been this bad in the first place. At the very least, the Scarlet Knights should be able to win a game or two in the Big Ten.The bad news? As mentioned above, the current season isn't over yet. Rutgers still has (relatively) winnable games left against Northwestern, Penn State, and Minnesota—but the Scarlet Knights' best player, Corey Sanders, is currently suspended for at least another week.Look, there's no joy in watching a college basketball team struggle this badly; Jordan and his players are real people, with real feelings, and being utterly overmatched in game after game must sting. Still, connoisseurs of the sport should take notice: We may never see a squad this feeble again.
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Basically, there are only two things Rutgers isn't awful at: not fouling and free throw defense. Free throw defense, you're probably thinking. That isn't even a thing. Correct! One of the Scarlet Knights' only redeeming qualities is that their opponents happen to miss more free throws than expected, which essentially means Rutgers is getting lucky.In conference play, the Scarlet Knights have been even worse. They're last in the Big Ten in both offensive (89.9) and defensive (119.5) efficiency. Those numbers mean that over 100 possessions against an average team, Rutgers would lose by 29.4 points. On the other hand, at least Rutgers is No. 1 in tempo, apparently preferring to get its games over with as quickly as possible.How does this happen? It happens when roster doesn't have Big Ten-caliber players. According to KenPom's offensive efficiency statistics, some Big Ten teams have 10 or more players who are better than anyone on Rutgers:
The good news for Rutgers? There's almost no way the team can be this bad again next year, mostly because no team has ever been this bad in the first place. At the very least, the Scarlet Knights should be able to win a game or two in the Big Ten.The bad news? As mentioned above, the current season isn't over yet. Rutgers still has (relatively) winnable games left against Northwestern, Penn State, and Minnesota—but the Scarlet Knights' best player, Corey Sanders, is currently suspended for at least another week.Look, there's no joy in watching a college basketball team struggle this badly; Jordan and his players are real people, with real feelings, and being utterly overmatched in game after game must sting. Still, connoisseurs of the sport should take notice: We may never see a squad this feeble again.