Team preview: Rutgers

Blue Ribbon Illustrated previews the 2004-05 college basketball season, exclusively on Insider.

Updated: October 20, 2004, 5:20 PM ET
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Editor's Note: Insider has teamed with Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, long known as the Bible of college basketball, to provide a comprehensive look at all 326 Division I teams.

COACH AND PROGRAM

Anyone who doubted that a full-fledged revival of Rutgers basketball is underway only needed to tune in to last year's NIT championship game between the Scarlet Knights and Michigan. When Rutgers made a big second-half run in a game it ultimately lost, 62-55, Madison Square Garden rocked, in a way it hasn't for the New Jersey school since its heyday of the 1970s and early 1980s.

"The people are really coming around," said coach Gary Waters, whose team recorded the program's first 20-win season since 1982-83. "There's an excitement around Rutgers basketball that hasn't been felt around here in a long time. And it's not just basketball ... football's turning around, too. It's an exciting time for Rutgers sports."


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