Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame
The 1919-20 men's basketball team was the first Rutgers basketball team to play in a postseason tournament.
The team finished with an 11-4 record, playing a schedule against opponents that won nearly 70 percent of their games. The regular season was highlighted by a home win over Princeton, the program's first win over the Tigers, and the second win by a Rutgers athletics team over Princeton since the inaugural college football game in 1869.
The team was invited to participate in the National Amateur Athletic Union basketball tournament in Atlanta, Georgia, the lone national postseason tournament at the time. The event was a 16-team tournament held over four consecutive days, which Rutgers would play with just five players and without a coach. The Scarlet Knights defeated the University of Georgia, the University of Utah and the Young Men's Organization of Detroit to advance to the championship game, where the squad fell to NYU to finish as the tournament runner-up.
The five-man lineup included leading scorer Leland Taliaferro, team captain senior Calvin Meury, sophomore Walter French, junior Art Hall and Edward Benzoni. A freshman on the 1920 team, Benzoni finished his career with 693 points, which stood as a Rutgers record for 26 years.
