Eatman said the bracelets were especially significant for the seniors.

“I wanted the seniors to understand they started their journey with Coach and they’re not ending it without her,” he said. “I want them to understand that she’s still here with them in spirit. They may not see her face, but everything she instilled in them is here.”

Perhaps on Friday the upheaval finally caught up with the Scarlet Knights, who finished 22-10. In a span of five days at the end of February, two of Rutgers’s best players were kicked off the team for a violation of team rules; Rutgers lost four of five games; Stringer took the medical leave of absence; and Eatman took over.

Eatman knew he needed to bring his emotionally frayed team together.

He showed two pictures to the players. One was of a horse, overloaded with gear, as well as a cowboy. The other was of a sleek racehorse, which looked ready for the Kentucky Derby.

“So which horse do you think can win?” he asked the players, then answered his own question: “Not even Secretariat could win a race if he was weighted down. So you have to take off that burden.”

“We need to step up,” a player said.

“No, you don’t have to step up,” Eatman replied. “You need to take off the stuff that’s loading us down so we can run.”

The players nodded.

Then they symbolically did just that. Each player wrote down something that was holding her back. They threw the pieces of paper in a stainless steel pail. Then guard Zipporah Broughton lit the paper on fire.