newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MATT SUGAM

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

PISCATAWAY – Get to the left side of the column. Plain and simple. That is the goal right now for Rutgers.

At 2-3 in the Big East, Rutgers could get back to .500 against Notre Dame and find themselves inching closer to doing just that.

“We want to be on the left side,” head coach Mike Rice said. “That’s where the top eight are, and the bottom eight are on the right side. One of our managers talked to me and said 'I don’t know if I’ve ever been on the left side.'“

So with head manager Dave Fedora — a senior in his fourth season on the staff — sparking the rallying cry, Rutgers (11-8, 3-3 Big East) would knock off Notre Dame (11-8, 3-3 Big East) with a 65-58 win.

Now Rutgers sits at 3-3 in the Big East — their best conference start since 2003-04 when they went 4-2 — and in ninth place in the Big East. One spot away from the left side.

“To have the opportunity to be on the left side of the board, that’s what we talked about for the whole day,” Dane Miller (five points, four blocks and eight rebounds) said. “It’s fun and exciting.”

But it almost didn’t happen.

While Rutgers would lead most of the game, they went cold from the 5:18 mark of the second half until Jerome Seagers went to the foul line with 40.5 left and scored the final two of his 10 points.

Sitting on 61 points for over four minutes, Rutgers would see its eight point lead dwindle down to four.

“Missed shots, bad plays, good defense. A lot happened,” Rice said of the stretch. “That’s what you’re going to get. It’s what’s just going to happen with this team, but they didn't allow those five minutes to dictate how we defended or how we acted. There was maturity…I thought we responded with maturity and toughness.”

Something they didn’t do earlier in the season. The Scarlet Knights found themselves losing games with similar scenerios to the likes of LSU and Princeton.

“All those early games, we didn’t know late game situations. We didn’t know how to handle ourselves,” Mike Poole (nine points, five rebounds) said. “And now, with those losses, we know how to handle ourselves in late game situations and make the right plays and stay confident in the end of the games.”

And now they have the confidence that they can contend in the top half of the Big East. They’re just one spot away from being there.

“It’s a great accomplishment. Rutgers with a winning record in the Big East. You don’t hear that too often,” Poole said. “We’re .500 right now and it feels good, but we can’t be satisfied. We’re not satisfied. We’re far from being content. We just want to keep winning and keep rolling.”

And get to the left side of the column.

“We were yelling ‘left side’ tonight,” Rice said. “Again, this a chance for this program to finally matter. Finally become relevant.”

For more Rutgers basketball coverage follow Matt Sugam on Twitter @MattSugam and on Facebook.