Thursday night Rutgers could not survive their own 4th quarter collapse and in turn lost to the Louisville Cardinals 41-38 in the last regular season game of 2007. Rutgers played brilliantly for more than 3/4 of the football game; yet they let the Cardinals come back from 18 points down to capture a win on Senior Night in Louisville. Rutgers defense was able to limit Louisville's star QB Brian Brohm, yet got way too relaxed later in the game, giving Brohm and his potent offense the opportunity to win. Rutgers also slowed down offensively in what was a pathetic loss typical of the 2007 team. Rutgers couldn't stick to their motto, as they failed to chop for all 60 minutes. It was surprising to see how well Rutgers was handling Brohm and his offense, as the Scarlet Knights took advantage of the Cardinal's poor defense. Rutgers did not turn the ball over offensively and Mike Teel returned to his early season form managing the game perfectly and was attacking the Cardinal secondary any chance he got. Teel found his teammate Kenny Britt 12 times for 173 yards and 2 touchdowns. He also found Junior WR Tiquan Underwood 4 times for 63 yards making Britt and Underwood the 2nd and 3rd receivers in Rutgers school history to reach 1,000 receiving yards or more in a season. The pair joined former Scarlet Knight Tres Moses, who amassed 1,056 yards in 2004. Underwood and Britt's 1,000-yard season make Rutgers the first team to have two 1,000-yard receivers on the same team and the 26th in NCAA history. Britt became Rutgers single season leader for receiving yards in a season, passing Underwood and Moses. However, it didn't matter how well the two played in the end. Teel passed for 265 yards, which was a big surprise with the way he has recently thrown the ball due to his thumb injury. In my pre-game I said that if Rutgers could establish a passing game that they would have a good chance to win, and they did. Ray Rice may have run for over 100 yards again, but he was certainly not as dominant as I would have expected against the Cardinals defense. He did find the end zone 3 times-in the first half, to tie his career high. However, I did not expect the Scarlet Knights to ever be up as much as they were. With the lead that they had, Rutgers should've won that football game. I'm not sure whom the finger needs to point to, but the majority of the team fell asleep against the Cardinals, and you can't do that against their offense. Brohm may have been under 300 yards passing, but Brock Bolen and Bilal Powell both ran for over 100 yards against the Scarlet Knights, which no one could've seen happening.
PREDICTION RESULTS
I predicted Louisville 35 Rutgers 27; the Final outcome was Louisville 41 Rutgers 38. Looked like the Scarlet Knights were going to prove me wrong on this one, but the Cardinals rallied back from an 18-point deficit to win it on an Art Carmody field goal. This puts my predicting results to 3-2.
Keep Choppin'
-Mike
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