Rutgers comeback bid falls short vs. WVU

BY MIKE McDONALD
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY JEFFGRANIT staff Rutgers tailback Brian Leonard was a man on a mission on Saturday, as he ran well against a vaunted West Virginia defense in the Scarlet Knights’ 35-30 loss to the Mountaineers. Just three days after his team’s demoralizing 41-17 loss to the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano expressed confidence in his team’s ability to bounce back.

“There is no need to worry about this football team,” he said. “They are going to give it everything they got, we just need to make sure that we go out and execute and just play the game.”

This past Saturday, Rutgers did just that, despite facing one of the top Division I teams in the nation. The Scarlet Knights hosted a West Virginia team that was ranked 13th in the Associated Press Poll and 15th in the USA Today/ESPN Poll, coming into the game, and played them tough, surprising most prognosticators, who expected a second straight blowout for Schiano’s squad.

Rutgers Stadium was sold out, packing with 35,079 fans watching Rutgers give a strong effort. But in the end, RU finished with the shorter end of the stick, losing by the final score of 35-30.

Rutgers wideout Tres Moses is sandwiched by West Virginia’s Jahmile Adde and Adam Jones in the Scarlet Knights’ loss on Saturday. With the loss, Rutgers now sits at 4-4 overall and 1-3 in Big East play.

Before the game, Schiano predicted that his team would give a better offensive performance, saying “I think our running game is coming around. I was very encouraged by the way we were running the ball.”

Brian Leonard proved his coach prophetic, running well against West Virginia. He rushed the ball 27 times for 80 hard-earned yards.

The Mountaineers scored the game’s first 14 points, forcing Rutgers to turn to its passing game. Ryan Hart has developed into a solid quarterback, but when the defense knows what is coming, it makes his job of leading the offense down the field that much more difficult.

“When the other team knows you are throwing and start sending all their blitz packages, Ryan [Hart] is bound to take a bunch of hits,” Schiano said.

Despite the Mountaineers gunning for him, Hart completed 35-of-46 passes for 324 yards and three touchdowns on the day. In doing so he set a career-high with 35 completions, and did a good job of spreading out his passes. The players doing the most damage once catching the ball were Tres Moses and Marcus Daniels. Moses caught eight passes for 94 yards and Daniels caught six passes for 84 yards.

“We have plenty of playmakers out there — guys like Tres Moses, Clark Harris, Brian Leonard, Chris Baker — there are so many guys out there who can make plays.”

And they made the plays on Saturday, as Rutgers put a good scare into WVU. Unfortunately, the offense was not the problem. The offense was almost able to overcome a subpar defensive performance by mounting an inspired comeback late in the game.

With less than nine minutes left to play, Rutgers trailed by the score of 35-17. Rutgers scored the next 13 points to bring the score to 35-30. The momentum was on Rutgers’ side, until RU’s onside kick was recovered by West Virginia.

Unfortunately, Rutgers came up a little short. However, if Rutgers can come out and play each opponent as they played West Virginia, this team should be able to win a lot more football games over the next few years. For now, the attention turns to Boston College (B.C.), the Scarlet Knights next opponent, Saturday at B.C.