Laviano throws 2 touchdowns, Hicks runs for 2, Rutgers wins

The key to the game was no secret.

No. 3. Early in the second quarter, Ford threw into a crowd and was wild high, enabling Rutgers’ Kaiwan Lewis to pick it off.

The Scarlet Knights made the announcement before Saturday’s game against Kansas.

It was the first homecoming win for the Knights since October. 15, 2011, when they beat Navy, 21-20.

But Rutgers has had its own problems.

“We are being very smart with how we’ve created some things to utilize him”, Beaty said. “And we started to believe that we have a shot”.

Stanford gets their next two games at home in Palo Alto, and they will be pretty big matchups.

Add the scarlet and white “throwback” uniforms worn from 2007-11 and Piscataway began to feel nostalgic of its ground-and-pound roots.

Rutgers was unable to hang with Penn State, losing 28-3.

Then James went to work, rushing for five yards and recording 19 yards on a screen pass. Laviano followed with a hard play action before rolling to his right and finding tight end Matt Flanagan for a 7-yard touchdown – his third score of the season – to put Rutgers up two touchdowns.

In all, the Scarlet Knights are averaging a hair over 400 yards each game, sitting at 411.7 total yards through three contests.

Miller sparked the Jayhawks late in the third quarter after he forced and recovered the first fumble of his career at mid field.

Hicks had a 31-yard run to set up his 1-yard tally with 2:31 left in the half.

After forcing a third Kansas punt, Rutgers hit an abrupt snare on the ninth play of a 67-yard second-quarter drive.

“The run game was definitely clicking today”, Martin said. “He’d give, like, a real good run, I would have a real good run”. “It’s going to matter when we show up and we execute accurately and we do it with great effort and we outplay them”. “That’s why we was able to come out here and play like we did”.

The Scarlet Knights announced Saturday before kickoff against Kansas that senior defensive lineman Darius Hamilton, the team’s best defensive player, will miss the remainder of the season with a lower body injury.

“Just trust my reads”, Longa said.

With the running game back to normal on both sides of the ball, all that was left for improvement was Chris Laviano. He finished 18 of 25 for 201 yards and two interceptions. 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. Kansas, though, is hurt by the lack of a deep threat through the air as junior quarterback Montell Cozart (57.6 percent, TD, interception) hasn’t completed a pass of more than 40 yards. Sure, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, they probably still would have lost, but at least it wouldn’t have been such a demoralizing loss to be shouldered by one player. A bad snap on the point-after-touchdown attempt held the score, 13-0, in favor of RU.

“To a point, yes”, Wilson said of Rutgers’ pregame mindset. “And I started playing better”.

“To a point, yes”. Far from it, but these two teams will nevertheless confront each other and the result will go down in the books.