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Rutgers faces Hall of Fame head coach

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Basketball fans might not know what Hall of Fame head coach Larry Brown is doing these days. The Rutgers men’s basketball team faces him tonight in his second year at the helm with Southern Methodist in Dallas.

As the only head coach to win an NCAA title and NBA championship, Brown has the Mustangs (14-4, 3-2) on the rise in his short tenure.

SMU last made the NCAA Tournament in 1993 — two years shorter than Rutgers’ playoff drought. ESPN’s “Bracketology” projects the Mustangs breaking that 21-year skid with an 11th-seed appearance.

Brown, after finishing 15-17 his first year, has the Mustangs playing among the best defense in the conference.

Southern Methodist holds the second-best scoring defense in the AAC with 60.2 points allowed per game this season.

The Scarlet Knights (8-10, 2-3) only scored 55 on Sunday against Houston, shooting 31.2 percent from the floor, including 24.4 percent in the second half.

Rutgers’ 77-55 loss to the Cougars came after the Knights won three of their last six, which marked improvement in their sub-.500 season.

Part of those struggles came from junior guard Myles Mack playing only 21 minutes. Mack scored a team-leading 15 points and made the only 3-pointer in Rutgers’ 10 attempts.

“Myles was digging down deep, he spent himself the first seven, eight minutes. He was tired,” said head coach Eddie Jordan in a radio interview with the Rutgers IMG Sports Network.

Mack scored his 1,000th-career point Wednesday against Central Florida, but he cannot do everything offensively.

The rest of the backcourt, meanwhile, could not make up for Mack’s absence. Juniors Jerome Seagears and D’Von Campbell combined for only 2-of-13 field goal shooting.

Sophomore shooting guard Kerwin Okoro, who played his fourth game off a knee injury, shot 1-for-5 for 2 points in 17 minutes.

“We talked about energy on the defensive end,” Houston head coach James Dickey told the Associated Press. “When we defend and get multiple stops and get out there on the break or into our offense quickly, our offense moves the ball and makes them defend, and we are a better basketball team.”

Rutgers also must make its defense more consistent, especially in the second half. The Cougars scored 42 in the second half.

In the Knights’ previous game, they nearly threw away a victory against UCF. Rutgers won, 85-75, but the Knights allowed 49 points in the second half.

UCF closed its deficit to only 68-65 with 6:15 left in the game.

Mack, Seagears, freshman forward Junior Etou and junior forward Kadeem Jack scored double figures against Central Florida. Only Mack and Jack, who scored 10 points, did so against the Cougars.

Like Jordan, Brown head coached professional basketball before doing so in college. Brown began with the ABA’s Carolina Cougars in 1972.

Brown’s first collegiate head coaching job was at UCLA for two seasons from 1979-1981. He later was more successful with Kansas from 1983-1988, leading them to an NCAA title in his final year.

Turning Rutgers into a winning program is a work in progress for Jordan, who regularly speaks about analyzing his own performance.

Now he can analyze it against a Hall of Fame coach.

For updates on the Rutgers men’s basketball team, follow Josh Bakan on Twitter @JoshBakan. For general Rutgers sports updates, follow @TargumSports.


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