After riding a four-game losing streak, the Rutgers University men’s basketball team is looking for its first win of 2021.

The Scarlet Knights started the season with a 7-1 record, but have lost their last four games to Big Ten foes like Iowa and Michigan State.

“We’ve lost to all ranked teams, so we’re playing really good teams and we’ve got to play really well during the course of those games,” says head coach Steve Pikiell. “But we’ll regain it, that’s what I do. I took this job a long time ago … and I love when people doubt. That’s great.”

At the end of December, the team was ranked 11th in the nation. But the team has dropped out of the AP Top 25 for the second consecutive week. Pikiell says that he is not panicking just yet.

“We’re going to keep grinding. We’re going to defend better, we’re going to rebound better and our guys are going to play better. The results will show and we’ll keep moving forward. We’ve got a lot of the season still left.

With 12 games left to play, Rutgers is officially at the halfway point of its regular season. The Scarlet Knights will try to get back on track later this week when they play Penn State and Indiana.

“We’ll continue to get better and we can, that’s the good point. Some teams have peaked right now and we can get better, as long as we stay COVID-free too. That’s always a big part of this,” the coach says.

Rutgers takes on Penn State this Thursday at 7 p.m., followed by Indiana on Sunday afternoon.