<p>Rutgers’ Leonard in awe of playing at Navy - Schiano hopes respect for academy doesn’t affect score</p>
<p>Gannett News 101306 (C10-13)
Rutgers’ Leonard in awe of playing at Navy Schiano hopes respect for academy doesn’t affect score</p>
<p>By KEITH SARGEANT
Gannett New Jersey</p>
<p>PISCATAWAY – Brian Leonard rarely gets emotional about a particular opponent. Even when returning home to face Syracuse last season, the Rutgers running back said he didn’t feel uneasy playing the school he nearly committed to out of Gouvernor High School in upstate New York.</p>
<p>But on Saturday, Leonard admits, it will be different.</p>
<p>“I’ll have chills, definitely,” said Leonard, who will start at fullback when the Scarlet Knights (5-0) travel to Annapolis, Md., to take on Navy (5-1).</p>
<p>“You walk into the stadium and look up at that second deck, and see (the name of) every single war we’ve been in. Then, they do the jet flyovers and you see (the cadets), that gives you chills.”</p>
<p>Leonard has good reason for the respect he has toward the United States Naval Academy.</p>
<p>“My dad was in the Navy three or four years,” Leonard said. “I mean, I give those guys (in the Navy) the utmost respect. They’re the leaders of our country. Some of those guys, the seniors, are going to be off to war a month after the season and defending us. They’re clean players, never dirty, and they play hard on every play. I love playing against those guys.”</p>
<p>Rutgers coach Greg Schiano believes Leonard isn’t alone in his passion toward the service academy.</p>
<p>“There’s not one guy on this team that doesn’t realize what these guys have signed up for,” Schiano said. “They’re done with this football stuff, then they go and protect our country. So there’s definitely a very healthy respect for their players, not only for their commitment to football, but for the commitment they’ve made to our country.”</p>
<p>Yet, in the same breath Schiano cautioned his players from respecting a 5-1 Navy team too much.</p>
<p>“Look, they’re not defending us on Saturday,” Schiano said. “On Saturday, we defend them.”</p>
<p>Leonard agreed that Rutgers has a job to do Saturday afternoon, the business of returning home with its undefeated record intact.</p>
<p>“This is a really good team we’re playing,” Leonard said, “so we just have to match their intensity level.”</p>
<p>Good-bye</p>
<p>Rutgers’ history coming off bye weeks in the Greg Schiano era was most forgettable until last season, when the Scarlet Knights defeated Pittsburgh and Cincinnati after their break.</p>
<p>But from 2001 through 2004, the Scarlet Knights were outscored 300-148 in losing seven out of eight games after their bye weeks.</p>
<p>Asked what his team did differently last season in raising its after-bye performance, Schiano said, "Nothing.</p>
<p>“We’ve gotten more mature,” he added. “Hopefully we’ve coached them better. We’re always tweaking. I can’t say we did exactly the same thing we did this bye week as last year. We’re constantly trying to figure out the best way to do things. But there’s been no philosophical change, so to speak.”</p>
<p>Schiano hopes that Rutgers’ preparation from the bye week will pay off Saturday.</p>
<p>“We worked very hard last week,” said Schiano, whose team practiced Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before taking the weekend off. “To us, it was a return to training camp mode. Part of that was Navy preparation, part of it was getting ready for six other games we have in the season. We worked hard for three days and then it was good for them to get away.”</p>
<p>Schiano estimated his team used “60 percent” of last week’s preparation on Navy, and the rest of it was spent on ironing out his own team’s wrinkles.</p>
<p>“We had areas of emphasis I won’t get into because it would probably give someone competitive advantage knowing what I think our weaknesses are,” he said. “We tried to hone in on certain field zones, certain down and distances, things like that. When we weren’t doing Navy, we were doing situational football, which is one of the things, especially with a young team like we have, that’s really important.”</p>
<p>Schiano isn’t concerned with losing steam off his team’s 5-0 start.</p>
<p>"I’m sure there’s a school of thought where you concern yourself with, ‘Do we lose momentum?’ " he said. “I don’t know. But I don’t think it will (be a factor).”</p>
<p>‘A’ for efforts</p>
<p>Both the Navy and Rutgers football teams boast impressive credentials off the field as well. The Naval Academy is at the head of the class in graduating its student-athletes.</p>
<p>Navy ranks first among NCAA schools at the Division I-A level with a 98 percent graduation rate. Rutgers, meanwhile, earned the fourth-highest Academic Rate Progress (APR) from the NCAA’s annual report last year behind only Stanford, Navy and Duke.</p>
<p>Of the 56 teams competing in bowl games last season, Navy and Rutgers ranked 1-2, respectively.</p>
<p>Series history</p>
<p>Navy leads the all-time series 10-9-1, with the teams meeting all but one year since 1995.</p>