Sometime Saturday afternoon, a caravan of buses will pull up to venerable Madison Square Garden and discharge several hundred Rutgers University students who share one goal.

“We want to take over the place,” senior Mike Yard said. “We want the Garden to be a second home for us.”

Yard is a leader of the Rutgers Riot Squad, which has transformed the RAC into a razor-edged weapon for the Scarlet Knights’ basketball team. Now they’ll try to tilt the World’s Most Famous Arena against Michigan in both wrestling and hoops as part of the Big Ten’s annual “Super Saturday” doubleheader. The matchups start at 1 and 4:30 p.m., respectively.

“I can only imagine it’s going to be mostly red in there, with a sprinkling of Michigan fans here and there,” Rutgers forward Ron Harper Jr. said.

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Don’t scoff. It’s happened before. In the program’s heyday, from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, regular season games at the Garden were a staple for Rutgers basketball. The 1975-76 Final Four squad played at the Mecca seven times, winning them all before huge crowds.

“The Garden wanted us,” said Joe Boylan, then an assistant coach and now the color analyst for Rutgers’ radio broadcasts. “We were the best team in the East. We had a first-team All-American (forward Phil Sellers). It was a great environment for us.”

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During that era the Scarlet Knights took on Purdue, Cincinnati, Louisville, Ohio State, Seton Hall, Penn and North Carolina (three times!), among others, at 33rd and Eighth.

“We brought huge crowds — those crazy Rutgers fans, the band, the cheerleaders,” said Mike Palko, a reserve on the Final Four team. “After a while it felt like a home court.”

It was just about impossible to get into the 2,000-seat College Avenue Gym, so to midtown Manhattan the faithful went.

“We’d take the train in, and it would always be filled with a lot of Rutgers fans,” said Elliott Sacks, who is president of the Court Club. “It really was a home away from home. A lot of times it was the only chance people got to see them play in person.”

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There are some parallels to this season. Rutgers (16-5 overall, 7-3 Big Ten) is 15-0 at the RAC, has sold out the 8,000-seat building five straight times and will do so for the final four contests there. Michigan (12-8, 3-6) is 11-0 all-time against the Scarlet Knights but is hanging onto NCAA Tournament hopes by a thread. The Wolverines have tons of alumni in the New York metropolitan area, but this won’t be a repeat of Rutgers’ last Super Saturday matchup, when Wisconsin fans took over the arena three years ago. This crowd is expected to be in the 14,000 range (Rutgers' official ticket allotment was 2,500), and the majority will be rooting for the Scarlet Knights.

“I hope our fans show up loud; I know Michigan has a huge following,” Rutgers coach Steve Pikiell said. “Maybe we can make it just like the RAC environment.”'

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This is an important moment for Pikiell’s squad, whose record away from home is just 1-5. With trips to Maryland, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Penn State and Purdue still to come, this might be the best chance to add another win to that column, which is heavily scrutinized by the NCAA Tournament's selection committee. (For resume purposes this will be a neutral game, not a road game).

Plus this is a big stage, the closest possible simulation of what’s coming in March. Of the nine players in Rutgers’ rotation, only Geo Baker has played at the World’s Most Famous Arena.

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“It just feels different,” Baker said. “You just know that it’s a special place.”

Baker and his teammates are sensing the enthusiasm bubbling up around them. As the Riot Squad’s Yard put it, “People have been dying to latch onto a successful team for a long time.” This is the breakthrough, proof that Rutgers can contend in the Big Ten in a major sport.

“We went to the dining hall the other day — me, Geo, Shaq (Carter) and Myles (Johnson)," Harper Jr. said, "and maybe 15 people came up to our table and said, ‘Keep making Rutgers proud.'"

On College Avenue recently, “Somebody asked me to ‘sign my forehead,’ and I was like, ‘I can’t do that,’” Harper said with a chuckle. “I was like, ‘I’m not sending you back to your dorm room with my signature on your forehead.'”

Players are getting hit with ticket requests, too, because the RAC’s student section is booked solid. Those who want to see the team have one alternative, like the old days: Head to the Garden.

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.