When Rutgers fans took over MSG — Former coach remembers tourney Coaching college basketball is all about character and former Rutgers basketball coach Gary Waters, who coached the Scarlet Knights from 2001-2006, has written a book called Ten Principals of A Character Coach. Waters took his teams to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) three times. His greatest memory of Rutgers came when they went to the NIT Finals playing Michigan at Madison Square Garden in 2004. "It was a great run because you had to win four games just to get to that game," Waters told me during a phone interview. "Our first game was at Temple, coached by the late John Chaney, and we had to win that to move forward. Once we got to the finals, it was at Madison Square Garden, which seats about 22,000. I'm telling you, the trains going from New Jersey to New York that day were filled with. I mean all the trains with Rutgers people, they put Rutgers paraphernalia all over the walls ceilings everywhere, all they did was sing songs."