Rutgers came to play in Ann Arbor Thursday night, plain and simple. The Scarlet Knights’ defense, ranked No. 15 (KenPom Adjusted efficiency) coming in, isn’t Nolan Richardson’s ’40 minutes of hell’ from his Arkansas days, but Steve Pikiell’s team thrives on making the opponent uncomfortable.

It often works when they play as hard as they did in a 71-64 loss at Michigan, especially when they’re making shots. A good, mid-range shooting team looked elite in that area for the first 10 minutes or so, making tough contested jumper after tough contested jumper. They also contested every pass, most shots and clearly came in on a mission.

“As you can see, Rutgers is a very tough team, well-coached, highly competitive, very physical,” Michigan head coach Juwan Howard said. “And they were expecting to come in here and beat us.

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