Michigan returns to the Crisler Center on Saturday (4:00 p.m., BTN) to open the Big Ten season against Rutgers.
The Scarlet Knights are 5-4 and on pace to be one of the worst high-major teams in college basketball this season. Steve Pikiell went all-in on his five-star talent last year after almost a decade of steady incremental progress. That gamble didn’t work for the program — which finished with a losing record — and now the cupboard is bare, the optimism is gone.
It feels like Rutgers is unsettlingly close to where it began when Pikiell started building the program from the ground up, and a long way from the stretch where the Scarlet Knights strung together multiple NCAA Tournament appearances.
Rutgers lost by 16 points at home to Purdue in its Big Ten opener earlier this week and now travels to Ann Arbor to face a Michigan team that has had over a week off to practice and fine-tune after its impressive run at the Players Era Championship.
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