Northwestern vs. Rutgers GameThread

Rutgers basketball is in Evanston Saturday to take on Northwestern in a game that the Wildcats should have no business losing. The Scarlet Knights are 0-15 in the Big Ten and ranked 301st in the country by Ken Pomeroy. They might be the worst major conference team ever.

Our Tristan Jung wrote this outstanding, hilarious piece on Rutgers basketball. Here's an excerpt:

At this point, the badness of the team is just a cruel joke. Rutgers is Don Quixote tilting at a windmill. Rutgers is Oedipa Maas trying to find a postage stamp. Rutgers is in a wretched postmodern state, and its recovery is in doubt. The team is now so bad that you just have to stare and say, what's the point? Like Camus' famous example in The Myth of Sisyphus, Rutgers must keep pushing the rock up the mountain (court) by playing basketball. It cannot escape the absurdity of its existence.

***

Many postmodernists use black humor and absurdly dark situations to illustrate that there is no truth in society's social constructs. Right now there are enough opportunities for black humor in Rutgers basketball to make Thomas Pynchon proud. Maybe if Deshawn Freeman didn't go down, Rutgers wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe if the team had held on to beat Indiana at home or played a little better against Purdue, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But Rutgers' what-ifs are as pointless as Rutgers' season. There is nothing left but dark comedy, as Rutgers continues to turn the court into the Theatre of the Absurd.

If that doesn't get you hyped up to watch some truly B1G basketball, I don't know what will.

We're so confident that Northwestern will win that we made some promises to do ridiculous things if the Wildcats lose.

Come discuss this the game with us below: