Scarlet Knights Newzer

Commit no. 18

It's now 13 in June and eight since last Monday. Shawney Kersey, who'd reportedly been set on West Virginia, gave a verbal to Greg Schiano instead last night. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound wideout from Woodbury had 35 catches for 534 yards and four touchdowns last fall as a junior, but what catches my eye is the six - SIX - touchdowns he had on returns. Three kicks, three punts, into the end zone and while the track star's plenty fast, that says he's got some serious elusiveness too.

Mark Czerwinski chatted with Steve Beauharnais in today's Record (link) and I'll have a story in Saturday's paper off a chat I had with Greg Schiano.

Coaches, of course, aren't allowed to discuss recruits specifically until they're actually signed. But one of the things we talked about was the general geographic make-up of this class. I still remember Greg promising me some four years ago that one day, more of the top kids in New Jersey would stay home than leave. This class sure seems to have hit that, with its nine New Jerseyans. There are also three from Brooklyn, three from Pennsylvania, and one apiece from Connecticut, Delaware and North Carolina. But now tell me - do you sense a hole in that list?

That's right - for all its wonder, this class does not yet include a Floridian. Defensive tackle Antwan Lowery, the younger brother of current Rutgers linebacker Antonio Lowery, was up from Miami for Rutgers' camp this week and the Knights definitely have a solid shot at him. Still, Greg's brought in at least a half-dozen Sunshine Staters every year he's been here and he openly acknowledged to me that the NCAA's rule prohibiting Rutgers from holding camps down in Florida has had an effect.

But while it may be more difficult for his staff to glean information on recruits, and for those prospects to familiarize themselves with that staff, Greg insisted he's not devoting any fewer resources to the area. "We're keeping South Florida part of the 'State of Rutgers,'" he said. "We have good relationships in South Florida and we have to make sure we stick with our philosophy. These things are cyclical."

I can buy that. Florida kids don't generally commit early and this year, the local kids are grabbing up the scholarships fast. But you tell me, do you think it's still vitally important for Rutgers to have a pipeline in South Florida?

      

Fantastic Fans

It looks like we'll have a bit more recruiting news today, as Rivals.com is reporting Paulsboro LB Gerald Hodges and Voorhees' Logan Ryan, a CB, have both committed to Rutgers. Now, if 17 hotly-sought recruits committing to Rutgers BEFORE July would've read like a fantasy a few years ago, how fantastical would a story about the near-impossibility of getting a ticket in an expanded Rutgers Stadium have been?

Well, that's the truth these days: Who says Rutgers can't fill a Stadium? Deputy Athletic Director Kevin MacConnell tells me there's a waiting list for the brand new club seats, a waiting list for the brand new super-expensive loge boxes and that the waiting list for regular season tickets is bigger than the total season ticket holders Rutgers had just two seasons ago.

One of the more encouraging things in all this is that Rutgers is still committed to having its student section as loud and rowdy as its been. Kevin couldn't tell me exactly how many tickets are set aside for students, but he said 10,000 was a decent guess. Rutgers will put about a quarter of them up for sale to students - at a season cost of $77, or $11 per game - because a student survey, Kevin said, found a bunch of kids willing to pay to guarantee their entrance into the free-for-all general-seating student section.

The rest of the seats will be distributed as they were last year: on a designated day before each game, beginning at 12:01 a.m., students can log on to a special site and put in their request. Kevin said none of last year's eight games had all its student tickets claimed on the first day, or even the second, but I'm betting that changes this year.

With apologies to Eminem...

... I'm Back!

I've been wiling away the summer here, covering a whole bunch of baseball, of course talking some college football (I owe you a post on meeting Kansas Coach Mark Mangino at Yankee Stadium), but not doing much blogging. Well, CR and Eamon and all those other readers fabulous readers who've written me - you've flattered me off that last thing. How can I ignore someone saying he misses me?!

We have to talk recruiting, don't we? Fifteen commits? We know I'm not nuts about the whole star thing (Ronnie G, after all, was once a no-star kid), but I know they count for something and so... five five-star guys? Nine three-star guys? What the heck is going on here?

"When you're sending your kid off for four or five years, you want to feel very comfortable with the coaching staff," Ernest Bush told me. "I'm sure a lot of parents look at Coach Schiano and his staff and think, 'These men will look out for my son.'"

Well, Bush's son Malcolm will indeed be one of those kids in that staff's charge next fall. The 6-5, 235-pound tight end/defensive end out of Hackensack verbaled yesterday and today he told me the strength of this recruiting class played more of a role than the stadium expansion ("If I cared about a big stadium, I would've gone to Tennessee") or even Schiano's turning down Michigan last December ("A coach with good qualities is going to be someone you can trust"). Malcolm said the prospect of playing alongside so much talent is "exciting" and he sounded genuinely surprised when I asked if the prospect of competing with so much talent might be daunting: "I know what I'm capable of," he said.

Maybe even more impressive than that, though, was Malcolm's response when I asked if all those highly-sought kids committing put the pressure on him to hurry up and secure his own spot. "I thought about that," he admitted. "But the coaches were very upfront. They said I shouldn't rush, that I would have time to make my decision and they said they'd let me know before they offered another tight end."

So now Malcolm's getting ready for Rutgers camp Monday. Tom Savage is going to be at camp too and he said he's pumped to work with him. Which begged the question... since Malcolm's going to be playing quarterback at Hackensack this fall, is he planning on giving Tom a run for his money at camp?

"Oh no," Bush said with a laugh. "I'm going to let him throw to me. We have to get ready for next year."