PLAYERS TO WATCH
–Freshman QB Artur Sitkowski was an early arrival for 2018, taking part in spring drills and then winning the starting job from Gio Rescigno. He is the first true freshman to open the season at quarterback for the Scarlet Knights since 2001 — but he has had a rough ride the past three weeks and was replaced by Rescigno last week. “Just needed something different,” said coach Chris Ash. “Art didn’t necessarily do anything wrong in the game. There wasn’t much happening on offense and felt like we needed something different and gave a senior captain an opportunity to see if he could go spark the offense.” On Monday, Ash refused to talk about who will start this week.
–WLB Trevor Morris, who led the Knights with 118 tackles last year, continues to put up impressive numbers. He had his 12th double-digit tackling game with 11 last week and is tied for third in the Big Ten with 9.3 tackles per game. He averaged 9.8 last season.
–RB Raheem Blackshear scored Rutgers’ only touchdown in the loss to Buffalo, his eighth career TD, and he picked up 102 all-purpose yards in the loss.
–TE Jerome Washington is a member of the John Mackey Award Preseason Watch List. The award is presented annually to the most outstanding collegiate tight end. He had six catches in the first three games of the season and three grabs for a career-high 62 yards against Buffalo.
SERIES HISTORY: Rutgers and Indiana have split four annual games since Rutgers joined the Big Ten. The Scarlet Knights won the first two before the Hoosiers took the next two — 41-0 in Bloomington last year.
QUOTE TO NOTE: “Just keep working. I mean, that’s it. The process can be a painful one. It can be one that’s not a lot of fun. It’s not where any of us wanted to be at this moment. It is where we’re at and we’ve just got to keep going back to work. We’ve got a lot of young players that have been playing out there. We’ve got to get them better. Been saying that every week but that’s what we’ve got to do. Starts, again, with myself. I’ve got to find a better way to coach. Got to find a better way to lead the team and lead the staff and get our preparation on game day because when you have the penalties we had, the mental errors we had, you can’t do it on games.” — Coach Chris Ash after the loss to Buffalo when asked where he goes from here.
