Rutgers Scarlet Knights

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights play at Jersey Mike's Arena in Piscataway, representing New Jersey's flagship university and one of the nation's original colonial colleges. Scarlet-clad crowds have followed a program working to reestablish itself as a Big Ten and Northeast basketball power, buoyed by a strong in-state talent pipeline. Rutgers basketball carries the weight of history as one of America's oldest institutions of higher learning, even as the program continues building its modern basketball identity.

Rutgers's signature basketball season came in 1975-76, when the Scarlet Knights went 31-0 in the regular season before falling in the Final Four, first to Michigan and then to UCLA in the third-place game. The program has never won an NCAA championship and has made just a handful of tournament appearances since. Rutgers joined the Big Ten in 2014, bringing East Coast basketball tradition into the conference's ongoing national expansion.