He’s leaning on the players (to lead) more than he did my first two years. If Derrick Randall doesn’t do something right, he’s like, ‘Dane, why didn’t he do this?’ It’s not so much him yelling at individuals. It’s more him looking to the leaders. That’s what good teams do.

It would be nice to go to a big school and stay home. I think it would be exciting to do something like that."

I’m very excited to show everybody what direction this program is going . . . And again, I always say it’s going to happen. That’s my phrase. It’s going to happen. We’re going to do it here. We’re going to win. I don’t know when, but I can see progress and I can see guys chemistry and developing and maturing."

Not necessarily talking bad . . .No one really said Coach [Jay] Wright is a bad person or Villanova’s a bad program or anything like that. It was just more looking at their roster, saying what they have and what they don’t have.

Last year, whether it was wrong or right, I thought I had to solve the problems right then and there—whether it was somebody not feeding the post correctly or shot selection or body language and interaction with teammates. That would distract me from the overall focus of what we’re trying to get done on that day. Now we’ve been there already. I’ve told my players the right way to do things. Last year I was always putting out fires, so to speak. This year I’m going to stay more focused on the whole picture."

Coach Rice, he’s going to make you feel comfortable. He’s always going to be there for you, always going to be in your corner. He reminds me of coach Keith [Stevens] from Team Takeover."

"A damn respectable running back," Moore said. "He doesn't go down on first contact. He's probably one of the few people I respect on that team."

He had a great visit,...He really enjoyed hanging with Jerome [Seagears] and Wally [Judge]. He was impressed with the talent Rutgers has."

"Rutgers: Coach [Mike] Rice was the last home visit I had. It was probably the best one of them all. It was a lot different than the rest of the visits. One of the things Coach Rice talked to me about was how I could do something special by staying home and coming to Rutgers."

Sources suggest that if NBC, which is desperate for sports inventory, signs a TV contract with the conference, it would be willing to pay the Big East football teams $10 milllion apiece and throw in an additional $4 million for the 16 basketball schools. One of the network’s ideas may be to run a full day of Big East football, along with Notre Dame home games, from noon to midnight Saturdays on either NBC or its still-growing cable channel.