Geo Baker threw the pass from half court and watched it sail higher, higher, higher. “Too high,” he thought, because as much as he trusted his teammate on the receiving end, the Rutgers guard chalked up this attempt at an alley-oop as a turnover. Tough break. Get 'em next possession.
But Ron Harper Jr. kept defying gravity, too, stretching his long arms above the rim. He somehow found that Baker pass, threw it down with both hands as he let out a roar, and the noise that followed from the 8,329 fans at the Rutgers Athletic Center made you wonder if they would need to interrupt the game to put the roof back on.
This was in the middle of a 14-0 run to start the game against rival Seton Hall, a lead that would grow to 26-5 before the Pirates limped back to South Orange with a 68-48 loss. This was the most electrifying moment on an afternoon that saw the Rutgers fans fill every seat long before tipoff and, two hours later, linger on the court even as the clean-up went to work in the aisles.
The RAC is loud. This is not breaking news. But the roars from the Rutgers faithful on this day almost felt primal. This was like a group therapy session for eight thousand people.
The culmination of the rollercoaster football coaching search, the first public appearance of Greg Schiano, the chance at knocking a rival off its perch atop the state -- it all combined to turn the RAC into a chamber of horrors for Seton Hall. This is how college sports are supposed to look, the passion and the pride and the people coming together.
To borrow the words of noted philosopher William Stephen Belichick: “Big day for Rutgers.”
“That whole first stretch when we got up big on them, I thought, that’s the loudest I’ve ever heard the building before,” Baker said. “This is the type of atmosphere we’ve all dreamed about growing up. It was just fun for it to happen.”
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Baker knew this game would be different when he arrived at the RAC for shoot around and saw towels on every seat. Every spot was filled -- all the way up to AC vents, all the way behind the banners in the student section, five deep standing behind the basket -- before the Big Ten Network went live. And then Schiano made his entrance.
He and his wife, Christy, emerged from behind the student section, and within a few steps, he was pumping his fist and high-fiving fans as he made his way to his court-side seats. "Together, Rutgers will be number one!” he declared during a rousing halftime speech that would have been the only highlight on another afternoon.
Not this one. Not with the way the basketball team not only punched Seton Hall in the face at the start, but how it held onto that big lead through a breezy second half. Yes, the Pirates were without their two best players when Myles Powell suffered a scary concussion in the first half, but they never looked like the No. 22 team in the country.
“We’re getting there," Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell said. “The place was rocking. This university is exploding, I keep saying that. It was nice to have everybody come together. There’s a lot of good things happening, so we can continue that trend.”
Pikiell’s team is 8-3 with the soft part of the schedule upcoming. If it plays like it did defensively in this game, with big contributions from graduate transfer Akwasi Yeboah (14 points, eight boards) and center Myles Johnson (13 boards) to go along with the usual strong play of Harper and Baker, the Scarlet Knights can host a March game on this court in the NIT.
But that’s for another day. This one was worth savoring after the 2-10 football season, the messy coaching search, and all the other rough days. Schiano yelled at fans to slap block R magnets on their cars when they got back to the parking lot, and finally, this athletic program gave them the kind of day that made them excited to do it.
It started with Harper somehow turning that alley-oop pass from Baker into a thunderous dunk, and it ended two hours later with his teammates carrying the New Jersey-shaped trophy back to their locker room. Nobody wanted to go home. Who can blame them?
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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