The Papa John’s.Com Bowl turned out to be a microcosim of the remarkable Rutgers football season. The Scarlet Knights trailed North Carolina State by eleven points at half-time of Monday’s post-season game at legendary Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama but scored 23 second-half points to beat the Wolfpack 29-23. That culminated R-U’s incredible turnaround in 2008…giving the Knights their seventh straight win to turn a 1-5 disaster into a memorable 8-5 season and the school’s record third straight bowl victory in its unprecedented fourth straight post-season game. And it was fitting that the comeback in the game was engineered by the person mainly responsible for the comeback in the second half of the season—senior quarterback Mike Teel. He was the Papa John’s.Com Most Valuable Player, leading the Scarlet Knights on a game-winning drive in the fourth quarter, culminating on a 42-yard touchdown pass to redshirt junior wide receiver Kenny Britt. Teel ends his career with a 22-of-37 passing performance for 319 yards and two t-d’s. The 300-yard passing game was the tenth of Teel’s career which tied the Rutgers’ all-time record. Meanwhile, Britt became the Big East’s all-time leading receiver, recording 3,043 yards for his career, passing former Pittsburgh wide-out Dietrich Jells (3.003 yards) for the conference mark. For the game, Britt caught six passes for 119 yards, tying him with Pitt receiver Larry Fitzgerald for the Big East record with 14 100-yard receiving games for his career. His one touchdown catch also tied the Rutgers’ all-time record with 17 career t-d receptions. What a way for Teel to go out in definitely his final game as a Scarlet Knight AND what a way for Britt to probably go out in what might have been his final game at R-U. AND what a tremendous job by head coach Greg Schiano, his staff and the rest of the Scarlet Knights who put together a season to remember on the Banks of the Old Raritan! It is very difficult to turn around a college football season in mid-stream but that’s just what Schiano and Company did. Congratulations!
Archive for December, 2008
The remarkable turnaround in 2008 for the Rutgers football team will conclude on a high note at legendary Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama with a hard-fought win over North Carolina State in the Papa John’s.com Bowl. The Scarlet Knights will make it seven wins in a row…running the table…en route to an 8-5 season and a school-record third straight bowl victory in its unprecedented fourth consecutive post-season game. Let’s call it R-U 35 N-C State 28 in a Big East/ACC tussle down south. R-U senior quarterback Mike Teel will conclude his record-setting career with another big game…clicking with his talented corps of receivers including All-American Kenny Britt, Tiquan Underwood and Tim Brown. Meanwhile, the Scarlet Knight defense will do just enough to slow down the Wolfpack’s talented quarterback Russell Wilson. Again, Rutgers over North Carolina State 35-28 to put a capper on one of the great football comebacks in Scarlet Knight history.
Earlier on Sunday, I threw down the gauntlet, saying the Rutgers basketball team had to be competitive in its next three games at number-one North Carolina, home to number-three Pittsburgh in the Big East opener on New Year’s Eve day and at number-two Connecticut next Saturday. I didn’t say they had to win…but show me something…don’t get run off the floor…be competitive. Well, the first game is history and, despite the final score, I thought the Scarlet Knights WERE competitive at Carolina. Clearly, R-U could’ve played in Chapel Hill until Thursday and never take the lead against the Tar Heels…but, for the most part, Fred Hill’s crew hung with Roy Williams’ team. Kudos to freshman Mike Rosario for showing that he more than belonged on the same floor with the nation’s number-one team…scoring a game-high 26 points to tie National Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough. If there is one area of major concern with this R-U team, it’s the lack of an inside game. The Scarlet Knights didn’t really look inside for the likes of Hamady N’Diaye or Greg Echenique…nor did they get anything from them. That has to be addressed quickly before the start of the rugged Big East season. Let’s see what happens Wednesday against Pitt.
Forget about 9-3. Forget about a 12-game out-of-conference cream-puff schedule that still produced three hard-to-believe home losses to the likes of St. Bonaventure, Lehigh and Binghamton. It’s all irrelevant. Because if you can’t compete against the nation’s elite…and if you can’t compete against the giants of your conference…then any alleged progress in the program or recruiting is really not worth taking seriously. TONITE, at number-one and undefeated North Carolina….then the Big East opener at home against Pittsburgh on New Year’s Eve day…and the second league game next Saturday against Connecticut…really are the barometers that this Rutgers basketball team AND program are to be judged on. No one really is expecting Rutgers to win any of these three games (their best shot is against Pitt.) But a lot of those in the “know” AND in Scarlet Nation will be watching to see if there is real progress under third-year head coach Fred Hill. Winning or losing to Binghamton, in may ways, doesn’t matter. If we are to believe in Fred Hill’s talk about “the process” and “building a winner”, then we need to start seeing it NOW. Take the floor at the Smith Center and be competitive. But, even more so, taking the floor and being competitive in YOUR LEAGUE really is what matters. You can’t move forward nationally unless you’re competitive in your own conference. And, even though the Big East arguably is the toughest league in the nation, it’s the hand that Rutgers has been dealt. So, to Fred Hill and the Scarlet Knights, go out tonite….and in the first two league games…and show us something. Because up until now…winning or losing…it’s been all talk. Show us that this program is on the up and up….NOW.
The firing of Bob Mulcahy
I write the following post trying to put aside the fact that Bob Mulcahy fired me twice in the past seven years…from Rutgers football play-by-play in 2001 and from basketball play-by-play this year. I write this from the standpoint of how a man with the public stature of a Bob Mulcahy could work himself into the corner to the point where he got himself fired. Here’s a man who was the chief of staff for Governor Brendan Byrne…a man who headed up the state Corrections Department…a man who played a large role in building the Meadowlands sports complex into the giant it once was…and, of course, a man who helped guide the Rutgers football program to its greatest success ever, highlighted by the hiring of head coach Greg Schiano and a school-record four straight bowl games. But today (or actually after the PapaJohn’s.com Bowl game on December 29th), Mulcahy is a man without a full-time job….a man who’s legacy now is somewhat tainted by recent events regarding the running of his R-U athletics department. Of course, it all began to unravel over the summer with the Star-Ledger series of investigative articles by Josh Margolin and Ted Sherman, rife with revelations of unchecked spending and secret deals. Then, just three weeks ago, a special review committee issued a sharp rebuke to Rutgers officials for allowing the athletics department to operate without oversight in the drive to bring big-time football to the state university. Then, suddenly yesterday, it all came tumbling down with University President Richard McCormick asking Mulcahy to resign…and when he didn’t…Mulcahy got fired. Why yesterday? I don’t know. Quite possibly because the Board of Governors meets tomorrow. But, clearly, the seeds of this soap opera were planted when Mulcahy set his sights years ago on making Rutgers a major player in the college football landscape…knowing there was a ton of money to make. It started out as a noble venture with the hiring of Schiano and the agreement with Nelligan Sports to bring that marketing group into the key inner circle. But, evidently one thing led to another and deals were made internally to keep everyone happy…intended to keep the football machine moving onward and upward. According to the committee’s report, as more and more success on the gridiron led to more and more money coming into the athletic department, there was less and less accountability as to how things were being run…eventually leading to Mulcahy’s demise. It became a department that felt, in many ways, it was bullet-proof…insulated from the outside world. How many times have we seen that same scenario in the world of politics…a world that Mulcahy once live in. But, all of this should not be laid at Mulcahy’s doorstep. Where was President McCormick when all of this was going on? Where was the BOG? It’s too easy for them to say now that they weren’t in the loop…that it won’t happen again. It’s all well and good that they’re putting systems into place now to hopefully make sure that this type thing doesn’t happen again. But Mulcahy shouldn’t take all the blame for this. Governor Corzine and/or the state legislature should at least publicly reprimand McCormick and the BOG for being “asleep at the wheel.” McCormick and many members of the BOG were there cheering on the football team during the recent winning seasons and bowl game appearances. They now should stand up and be forced to take their medicine for looking the other way when things were running amuck in the athletic department. Sometimes errors of omission are as bad as errors of commission.
The fire alarm bells are going off for the Rutgers basketball team. The Scarlet Knights have fallen to 3-3 at the RAC this young season…and all losses have come to mediocre mid-majors. First, it was St. Bonaventure. Then it was Lehigh. Now, it’s Binghamton, which had never defeated a Big East team before coming into the RAC Saturday afternoon with just eight scholarship players. But Binghamton won 66-56…and now there has to be serious doubt in R-U fans’ minds about this team. All I heard from the Scarlet Knight faithful was that this team would be 12-0 heading into number-one North Carolina in late December. Now, in early December, R-U is 5-3 and downright lucky not to be 3-5, factoring in close wins over Marist at home and at Rider. And I don’t want to hear about J-R Inman missing the Binghamton game with an injury. He’s not an indispensable player, evident the fact that the team won without him when he was suspended. No, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that there’s something wrong with the make-up of this team. Clearly, the best two players are the freshman Mike Rosario and Greg Echinique. After that you have a 6-11 player in Hamady N’diaye who either can’t get the ball or when he does..can’t score the ball. You have the rather mediocre trio of Inman, Anthony Farmer and Jaron Griffin. You have two sophomore guards in Corey Chandler and Mike Coburn who are not playing up to the level they showed last season. And you have two freshmen in Pat Jackson and Christian Morrris who are not ready to play at the Big East level. Last but not least, you have a coaching staff that had better figure out what’s going wrong…play the right people in the right positions at the right time…and re-ignite the chemistry of this evidently fragmented team…or it will be a disastrous Big East season with the league as good as ever with a record eight teams in the A-P Top-25. The pressure is on head coach Fred Hill now to get the ship righted. The last thing the Scarlet Knights need is to go on the road Wednesday and lose to a bad Princeton team. It was bad enough Saturday losing at home to a nowhere Binghamton team.
What was unthinkable a month and a half ago has become a reality. The Rutgers football team has completed a remarkable turnaround, winning six straight games to close out the regular season after dropping five of the first six of 2008. The coup de grace was Thursday night in Piscataway on Senior Night when the Scarlet Knights destroyed Big East rival Louisville 63-14. That guarantees R-U a school-record fourth consecutive bowl berth in a game yet to be determined. And no one epitomizes the fantastic turnaround anymore than senior quarterback Mike Teel who set a school record AND tied a Big East record with seven touchdown passes. Teel also set a R-U mark with 477 yards passing. So, the guy who was being booed in mid-October now is the conquering hero at Rutgers Stadium where he played his final game in historic fashion. You know the old saying, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down; it’s how many times you get back up”..and so it goes for Mike Teel…and the entire football team. Hats off to Greg Schiano and Company for turning 2008 into a memorable season. Now, we sit and wait to find out where the Scarlet Knights are going in the post-season…the Motor City Bowl, the Meineke Car Care Bowl, the Sun Bowl or the Papajohn’s.com Bowl. Stay tuned.
Although there’s a bit of nagging doubt in the back of my mind that the desired storyline will not fully play itself out, I’m still going with the Rutgers football team to beat Big East rival Louisville 24-17 at home Thursday night, guaranteeing itself of its fourth straight bowl game berth. From 1-5 to 7-5 in the span of a month and a half AND clinching the bowl bid before a sold-out Rutgers Stadium on national television is almost too good to true…and you hope these young men can stand up to the pressure and nail down this incredible scenario. In football, you never know about weather conditions (there could be showers and chilly temperatures) and you always have to factor in troublesome turnovers. But I’ve got to believe that this all will happen…led by a red-hot quarterback in Mike Teel, a first-round NFL wide-out in Kenny Britt, an ever-improving offensive line and a defense that’s been solid all season long. AND you have to consider that Rutgers is playing a Louisville team in a freefall…having lost four in a row…giving up 33-points a game during that stretch. BUT the Cardinals also are playing for an outside shot at a bowl bid. Louisville would become bowl eligible at 6-6 but that same record didn’t get the Cardinals into the post-season, even with that comeback home win over Rutgers. Also, keep in mind that in the past two years, with the Scarlet Knights fielding two of their best teams ever, they’ve only split with Louisville, with each team winning by just three. So, it all adds up to a very exciting evening on the Banks of the Old Raritan…and I’m betting on Rutgers producing “Pandemonium in Piscataway” one more time. R-U 24 Louisville 17. And, on to the post-season!
The odds have been posted for Thursday’s Rutgers football game against Big East opponent Louisville…and the Scarlet Knights are a solid 13-point favorite.
Good to see the Rutgers men’s basketball team break a bad two-game losing streak (home losses to St. Bonaventure and Lehigh) with a 21-point home win over St. Peter’s 68-47…avenging last year’s horrible loss to the awful Peacocks up at the decrepit Jersey City Armory. And good to see head coach Fred Hill shake things up a little bit by starting senior forward J-R Inman and sophomore guard Mike Coburn for the first time this young season…bringing senior guard Anthony Farmer off the bench. Farmer responded with a game-high 13-points. (Inman replaced freshman Greg Echinique, who had an upset stomach.) Things get tougher on Wednesday night when the Scarlet Knights play a pretty good Rider team at Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton. R-U will be trying to avenge last season’s loss at the RAC…although the Broncs no longer have center Jason Thompson, who’s now playing for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
