newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MATT SUGAM

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

PISCATAWAY – When the upperclassmen of Rutgers football team came to Piscataway four years ago, they never anticipated waiting this long to play in a game of this magnitude. As wide-eyed freshman in 2008, they’d seen Rutgers ascend to national prominence in 2006.

After watching the school’s first Big East title slip through the hands of James Townsend on a snowy night in Morgantown, they thought Rutgers could be playing in a BCS game soon enough.

“When I came here I was thinking on the verge of a Big East Championship — a National Championship,” redshirt junior Scott Vallone said.

Fast-forward five years and Rutgers is in a position they haven’t been in this late in the season since 2006 — vying for a Big East title.

But in their minds, it should have never taken this long.

“I know I came with high expectations,” senior David Rowe said. “Then my freshman year we went 1-5 and I’m not going to lie, I kind of second-guessed.”

What the team didn’t question was whose fault it was. They’re well aware that Rutgers inability to take the next step and capitalize on the foundation that was laid for them is no one’s fault but their own.

”It’s [playing to win the Big East] where we should be, but we haven’t been able to get there for whatever the reason may be,” redshirt junior Khaseem Greene said. “It’s somewhere we should be and people should get used to seeing us there, but that’s based on what we do and we control that. No one controls that but ourselves.”

Even with the chance of a share of the Big East title for the first time in the school’s history, whether or not Rutgers goes to a BCS game is out of their hands. Not only do they need to win Saturday, but they also need West Virginia and Louisville to lose.

With their bowl fate unknown and in a position they’ve never been before, the Knights find themselves in unfamiliar territory.

“You just got to take it like every other game,” Rowe said. “The situation [with the conference standings] is still going to be there at the end of the game depending on what we do, but you just have to approach it like every other game.”

Still, this was the type of game these upperclassmen thought they’d be used to by now. They’d expected to be involved in such games on a yearly basis.

“I’m a little disappointed with what’s gone on [the last few years], but it’s a continued process,” Vallone said. “The program’s still young and we’re still learning how to win games. I think this season has been great for us in a maturity level.”

After their course seemed to be steered awry last season, the Knights were picked to finish last in the Big East.
Now, with one game remaining, the upperclassmen are right where they believed they’d be the last four years. Competing for a Big East Championship late in the season.

“We should have been there, but we haven’t,” Greene said. “We’re in a position to do it this year, so we’ll see. If it’s supposed to happen it’s going to happen.”

They’d thought it was supposed to happen already. That’s why they came to Rutgers four years ago.

It hasn’t come to fruition yet, but better late than never.

For more Rutgers football coverag follow Matt Sugam on Twitter @MattSugam and on Facebook