Knights host Nittany Lions on Senior Day
It was a hundred years ago that Rutgers and Penn State played football for the first time.
Saturday, on Senior Day in Piscataway, the hapless Scarlet Knights host the No. 16 Nittany Lions.
The Knights have lost nine games in a row after an opening win over Texas State — and have done so getting outscored by a combined 336-110. They were pounded, 42-7, at home by No. 4 Michigan and are 26 1/2-point underdogs to make it 10 straight defeats before finishing the season at Michigan State.
“It’s a big day. We’re playing Penn State, which is a big game, good opponent coming to town, but it’s more about Senior Day and having an opportunity to send our seniors off on a positive note,” coach Chris Ash told his regular Monday media conference.
The Nittany Lions are 7-3, 4-3 in the Big Ten. They are led by quarterback Trace McSorley.
Trace is a great player,” Ash said. “He’s a tremendous quarterback. He can beat you with his feet and beat you with his arm. Just spent the last five, six hours watching film of him, and he’s a competitor. I don’t know if it’s necessarily anything that a defense is doing to slow him down, because he’s still got a lot of production. He’s still very dangerous. It’s a different team than they had last year. The pieces around him are different, but he’s still a great player. He’s fun to watch.”
Freshman quarterback Artur Sitkowski was 8-of-19 in the loss at Michigan, where freshman Isaih Pacheco added another notch to his rookie belt. He ran for 142 yards, 80 of them for a touchdown, and the Knights ran for 193 — the most yards allowed by Michigan this season.
Pacheco, who also completed a 19-yard pass out of the Wildcat, and Raheem Blackshear have developed into a potent 1-2 punch for the Rutgers offense.
“It’s obvious to everybody that those two guys have play making ability, and our job is to get the best players on the field and get the ball into our best players’ hands and make things happen, and those two guys can do it,” Ash said. “We will continue to look at ways to get both those guys on the field and get the ball in their hands, and we have done that more and more as the season has gone on.
“We will continue to do that as we go, and I’m excited that they’re both coming back next year and bring us hopefully some play making ability.”
