First, a small, probably meaningless confession: I’m not a lifer. I’m not old enough, and I wasn’t brought up in a college hoops family. But when I think of Rutgers’ thirty-year national tournament drought ending Sunday night, I think of the story below...
While Illinois and Ohio State were throwing fisticuffs at each other in the Big Ten Championship Game Sunday afternoon, I was trying to find a digital archive of the Daily Targum sports pages from February 5, 2004. I had a specific memory of being a sophomore at Rutgers during that particular basketball season, working at the front desk of the College Avenue Gym, reading a recap of the previous night’s game (while I can’t remember the specific date, based on that team’s pattern of wins and losses, it had to have been a Rutgers overtime win against The U).