The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 130 is Rutgers basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Rutgers basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 1
- Elite Eights: 1
- Sweet 16s: 2
- NCAA wins: 6
- Bids: 8
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 12.1
- Bids per season: 0.07
- AP Polls: 41
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 2
- NBA players drafted & played: 12
- Conference Players of the Year: 4
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 9
- Conference tournament titles: 2
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 0
Overall scoop on Rutgers basketball
Rutgers basketball has been in the hoops news a lot lately, thanks to Dylan Harper showing out for the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals. While he has the potential for a long, great NBA career, Rutgers has a lot more history to get to.
We have to look at the 1975-76 season before anything else. Tom Young guided a Scarlet Knights crew that had four future NBA Draft picks all the way to the Final Four. Rutgers took down Princeton, UConn, and VMI before losing to Michigan in the only Final Four they’ve been to in program history. They finished at 31-2, with the only losses before to Michigan and then to UCLA in the third-place game.
While it was sort of a one-hit wonder for the Rutgers basketball program, Young had other good runs with them. He went 239-116 with the team and led them to the NCAA Tournament four times in total. In 1979, they made it to the Sweet 16, and in 1983, to the round of 32.
Toward the end of Young’s tenure, Rutgers had moved to the Atlantic 10 and continued to play in that conference when Bob Wenzel took over the program in 1988. Wenzel took them dancing in 1989 and 1991, but his tenure ended with five losing seasons in a row.
The end of Wenzel’s tenure was also the start of Rutgers’ tenure in the Big East. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a pretty big disaster, with Rutgers NEVER finishing with a record above .500 in conference play in 18 seasons. It also included the infamous Mike Rice scandal.
After one year in the American Athletic Conference, Rutgers moved to the Big Ten in 2015. Things have still been very bad, but there was some hope, as Steve Pikiell got the job in 2016 and took them back to the NCAA Tournament in 2021 and 2022, moving on to the round of 32 in ’21. It also broke a drought of three decades without making it to the tourney. However, things have gone South lately, even with top prospects Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.
Rutgers was certainly a notable program from the 1970s to the 1990s, but other than a few random seasons, they just haven’t been a team to reckon with lately. And in the Big Ten, competition is high, so you have to bring your A-game.