The Monday Morning Kickoff
It was another busy weekend in the Rutgers sports world and here is a look at the latest as The Monday Morning Kickoff ushers in a new week in the scarlet nation.
A view from the gridiron (Rutgers football)
Three Scarlet Knights were honored last week with conference awards as sophomore cornerback Blessuan Austin earned All-Big Ten Honorable Mention as voted on by the media. Senior defensive end Julian Pinnix-Odrick took home the conference Sportsmanship Award while sophomore offensive tackle Tariq Cole received an All-Big Ten Honorable Mention as voted on by the coaches.
While all was quiet on the field following a 2-10 season, it was a busy recruiting weekend in Piscataway as the Rutgers coaching staff hosted a contingent of official visitors.
“I spent most of my time with Brendan [Bordner], Axel [Nyembwe] and Tyree [Johnson] and obviously some of the other commits,” said Rutgers commit Mike Tverdov. “We really just got to know each other because before that, we really didn’t. We knew who we were, but never really talked. Both Axel and Tyree are really cool kids and I think they liked it a lot.”
Bordner will enroll in the spring semester and after an official visit to West Virginia next weekend, he will make his decision.
“It was a great visit, I had a really good time with all of the guys,” Bordner told Scarlet Nation of his RU visit. “For starters, I think ate more food than I ever have before in my life. I got a chance to hang out with Micah Clark, Sam Vretman, Mike Tverdov, Jamaal Beaty, and Axel Nyembe a lot.”
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The take from center court (Rutgers basketball)
The RU hoopsters split a pair of games last week as the team dropped its first one of the season to Miami, but bounced back to score a 72-58 win over Morgan State on Saturday night to move to 7-1.
“Great crowd tonight. We appreciate the students. They brought great energy,” head coach Steve Pikiell said after the Morgan State win. “We had a short prep for this game, one day to prepare. They change up defenses. They play hard. I was nervous about this game, but these two guys (CJ Gettys and Deshawn Freeman) came to play, as the whole team did. We held them to 29 percent [shooting], 18 percent from three, outrebounded them by 10. So, we were ready to play, worked hard. It was a good win for us."
The Scarlet Knights will return to action on Tuesday with a 7 p.m. tip-off inside The RAC against Central Connecticut. That will be followed up with a Saturday night road contest at Stony Brook, where Pikeill was the head coach for the previous 11 seasons.
On the mat (Rutgers wrestling)
The Scarlet Knights ventured out to Hofstra yesterday for the 2016 Journeymen Tussle. Highlighting the day for the No.12 Scarlet Knights was 157-pounder John Van Brill,who pinned No. 4 Max Rohskopf of NC State and also defeated No. 16 May Bethea of Penn.
However, head coach Scott Goodale was not too happy about the team’s overall performance.
“We came here to wrestle the nationally ranked guys. We had a lot of matchups with them and we didn’t win many of them,” said Goodale. “We won a couple, but it’s not enough. It wasn’t a terrible day, it wasn’t a great day, it was a very solid day. There were a lot of good things, but we had an opportunity to beat the best guys in the country and we didn’t do that, so that’s disappointing.”
Next up for Rutgers is a road contest against Maryland which will begin at noon on Dec 11th in College Park.