Box score
PISCATAWAY, NJ—Leading NJIT by just four points with 7:20 left in Wednesday night's non-conference men's basketball game, Rutgers scored eight unanswered points in the ensuing 2:21 and went on to what would become a 66-54 win over the visiting Highlanders.
The Scarlet Knights, now 4-0 at home and 4-2 overall, got a game-high 20 points from freshman center Gilvydas Biruta, who also pulled down 7 rebounds to go with his new career scoring high.
Rutgers also got 13 points apiece from seniors Jonathan Mitchell, a forward, who added a game-high 11 rebounds, and from guard Mike Coburn, who made 4 steals and blocked a pair of shots. Coburn connected on 5 of 7 shots, most of them pull-up jump shots in the paint.
Biruta shot 6-for-8 from the floor, including a make on his only three-point try of the game, which was part of the late game-winning run for the Scarlet Knights.
NJIT got 16 points from senior Jheryl Wilson and 10 points, a team-leading 6 rebounds and 3 assists from Isaiah Wilkerson.
The Highlanders, who played without Lamar Kearse, a freshman who rested an injured ankle after playing about 20 minutes per game through the first four contests, got a strong game at point guard from PJ Miller, who had been sharing time about evenly with Kearse.
Miller logged 31 minutes at Rutgers, posting 8 points and 4 assists, with one turnover. Chris Flores, who was the primary ball-handler for NJIT when Miller was off the floor, added 9 points.
NJIT has started slowly in all five of its games, including its win. The Highlanders fell into a quick 8-2 hole in the first three minutes Wednesday, with Biruta, the young Lithuanian who graduated from St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, scoring all eight of RU's points.
The Scarlet Knights continued to press their early advantage, holding a pair of 10 point leads in the first half, the latest at 21-11 after a three-pointer for Mitchell with 10:26 left in the opening period.
Things turned when the Highlanders began to get stops on the defensive end and executed their half-court offense to get a series of back-door layups. Down 10 after the Mitchell three, the Highlanders used an 11-2 run to close to 23-22 on a back-door layup from Sammy Schickel, with 6:04 left.
The Rutgers seniors, Mitchell and Coburn, led a spurt in response to the NJIT threat, as Mitchell hit a jump shot in the lane, Coburn hit a jumper of his own, stole the ensuing pass, was fouled, converting two free throws, for a six-point spurt the pushed the lead back to seven, 29-22, just 1:32 after the Highlanders had pulled to within a point.
However, the Highlanders stayed in contention, falling just short of tying the score when a three-point try by freshman Will Bond rimmed in and out at the buzzer.
NJIT got the first point of the second half on a foul shot by Wilkerson, but the Highlanders also piled up fouls at a dangerous rate, putting Rutgers in the bonus at 15:26 and in the double-bonus for the final 12:37.
The fact that the Scarlet Knights shot 20-for-25 on free throws in the game, including 12-for-16 in the second half, would make it all the more difficult—impossible, as it turned out--for NJIT to mount the kind of run it would need to overtake Rutgers.
The Highlanders trimmed the deficit to four points on five different occasions, the first at 16:14 and the fifth, and last, on a Wilson jump shot that made the score 49-45 with 7:20 left.
Rutgers, more than five minutes into its double-bonus, made six straight free throws, pushing the lead back to 10, 55-45, at 4:33, and then Mike Poole went up for a tip-in that made it 57-45, before NJIT's Wilson finally snapped RU's 8-0 run with a deep three-pointer at 4:45.
Mitchell got another tip-in on the next Rutgers possession—the Scarlet Knights, who had nine offensive rebounds in the game, made them count in a big way, beating NJIT, 17-0, in the second-chance points category.
Flores hit two free throws for the Highlanders, pulling them to within nine a final time, at 59-50, with 4:13 left, before Rutgers removed all doubts with five points on a Coburn jump shot and then the Biruta three-pointer that made it 64-50 at 2:15.
NJIT, with six of eight games away on the road between last Saturday and the end of 2010, has one of its two December home games upcoming. The Highlanders will host St. Joseph's of New York on Saturday at 2 pm in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
