If Rutgers MBB can add Bryant, why not schedule….

Guess how many D1 schools are in New Jersey?

Guess how many of them play basketball?

Hold those thoughts…..

Back in mid-May, men’s hoops added Bryant to its 2026-27 schedule. In the comments to that post, Zanily (I hope it’s Zanily) wrote, “I don’t mind games against Army and Bryant, although the Scarlet Knights find a way to lose one almost every year. What I do mind is that the likes of Princeton are not scheduled each year. Seton Hall? Let’s play them! But leaving off Princeton tells me that Rutgers doesn’t believe that it has much of a chance.”

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Scheduling is as much an art as it is a science. Who do you play? When? At home or away or at a neutral site? What’s their KenPom or NET or cumulative GPA? You can’t always schedule North Carolina School of Applied Shading & Airballistics or South Dakota Institute of Stationary Screen-Setting & Stagnant Offense. I mean, they aren’t good at hoops and we’d likely win but…..

So, why not schedule Princeton every year? Once upon a time, RU-Princeton football was the game “on the banks”. Until we decided to take the sport more seriously and Princeton started losing too much and said No mas! But we do play the Tigers pretty regularly in many other sports. Same with Seton Hall. Rutgers has so few rivalries compared to the rest of the Big Ten. It truly verges on embarrassing that we aren’t rivals with anyone (looking at you, Terps. Don’t walk away from me!)

Oh, the two questions at the top of this post. The answer is eight. There are eight New Jersey colleges in Division 1 and they all play basketball: Rutgers, Seton Hall, Princeton, Monmouth, St. Peters, Rider, NJIT, and FDU.

Eight teams. The same number as in a perfect eight-team tournament bracket. Hey, there’s an idea! Why not a mini-tournament with the eight schools? You could have double headers in two locales, maybe the Prudential Center and Cure Insurance Arena in Trenton. Those two sites are just 57 miles apart. Four teams at The Rock…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/rutgers-mbb-add-bryant-why-140200379.html

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Publish date : 2026-06-01 14:02:00

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