But the Knights were more than ready for the ground game – on both sides of the ball.
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It all added up to Rutgers’ first win on homecoming since October. 15, 2011 against Navy.
But Rutgers has had its own problems.
“It wasn’t pretty”, said interim head coach Norries Wilson.
“This guy, I mean, he kept them in the game against Washington State nearly by himself with some of the insane things he did in the return game”, Beaty said. “And we started to believe that we have a shot”. But those things, especially at this point, mean very little to anyone associated with the program, be them fans, players, coaches or administrators. Hicks rushed it in from the one-yard line for his first of two touchdowns on the day giving Rutgers a 13-point lead heading into the locker room.
When he was asked how those totals felt, all Hicks repeated the number rhetorically and grinned.
“It’s hard, but we’re used to this”, Pat Morris, a longtime supporter of the program from Somerset, New Jersey, said before the game. The same defense that allowed 8-of-12 third-down conversions on the day couldn’t keep Rutgers from finishing the 12-play, 84-yard drive that made the score 27-7 with 5:32 left in the third quarter. Rutgers gained 43 yards on 32 carries.
The Scarlet Knights answered back with 2:31 to play in the half, pushing their lead to 20-7.
After forcing a third Kansas punt, Rutgers hit an abrupt snare on the ninth play of a 67-yard second-quarter drive. Then to make matters worse, star receiver Leontee Carroo was suspended indefinitely and arrested after he was involved in an altercation with a female student after the last home game earlier this month. “I know the kind of people we have”.
The facts of the final outcome don’t do the Jayhawks any justice in terms of how they competed, what they overcame or the handful of good moments they did have.
The Jayhawks, on the other hand, couldn’t get anything going.
Kansas will come into the game with a 31-game losing streak on the road, last winning at UTEP 34-7 on September 12, 2009.
The Jayhawks were limited to 64 yards rushing on 29 attempts, a 2.2 yard average.
Longa, who was his usual self with 11 tackles, set the tone for a tenacious front seven. And with Rutgers’ relentless pressure in the passing game off the edge, six sacks rendered Kansas’ one-dimensional offense mostly dysfunctional. Yet all we hear about is what goes on with the football team. But even if Ford’s thumb is healthy enough to play this week, it seems likely we’ll see Cozart starting at Iowa State.
Thirty minutes before Rutgers took the field against Kansas, the school announced that Hamilton will miss the remainder of the season with a lower body injury. Stanford will get what could or should be a ranked Arizona team coming in necxt week.
Kansas lost. Again. And that narrative is not only all too common these days but also, more times than not, expected. Laviano’s legs did some of the work as well, scrambling eight times for 49 yards.
Rutgers wide receiver Carlton Agudosi (13) makes a touchdown catch… Quarterback Montell Cozart was 13 of 18 for 193 yards after replacing Deondre Ford (6 of 13, 85 yards, interception) in the second quarter.
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And Laviano made the most of it.
