Welcome Desmond Scott!

"Desmond Scott of Durham, N.C., rated the No. 2 all-purpose running back in the country by Rivals.com, verbally committed to Rutgers today," reports Tom Luicci of the Star-Ledger this afternoon.

Yesterday we were "warned" that this announcement of another highly-ranked 2009 recruit might be coming today and it was suggested in that article that Scott may have been tipped in his decision by the fact that Rutgers was the school of Ray Rice, a very similar back in terms of size and style.

I have another theory, found in an article that appeared in Yahoo Sports back on March 10 when Scott was starting his tour of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Maryland, North Carolina, Duke, and others, including RU.

“First of all I want to see how the academics are at the school. I want to major in education and be a social studies teacher and eventually a school principal. Secondly, I’ll look at the coaches and players and if I can get along with them and how I interact with them. Next, I’ll look at the city life and what I can do there and whether I can stay or leave after college. Finally, location doesn’t really matter as long as my family can come see me in a day’s drive.”

Anyone who's saying "first of all I want to see how academics are at the school" has to have been impressed when the NCAA's Academic Progress Report numbers came out in early May with Rutgers trailing only Stanford and Navy -- leading the Big East, and all other state universities, once again. Of course, another of Desmond Scott's schools, Duke, was tied with RU at #3 in the APRs, but I don't think Duke is thinking about challenging for a BCS bowl in the next four or five years.

Welcome to Rutgers Desmond!

(Here's a short summary of the most recent 2009 commitments).