The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • S7

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2007 COLLEGES THE RECORD S-7 Sosa tackling the big jobs Hofstra proud of football star Sullivan sets receiving mark By JOHN ROWE STAFF WRITER Saturday was a bittersweet experience for Charles Sullivan. Mixed in with the agony of the Hofstra football team suffering its first defeat was the ecstasy of the former St. Joseph star becoming the Pride's all-time leader in receptions. LOCAL COLLEGE blocking Ray Rice or a double-teaming tight end, but mostly, right tackle Zuttah said, he "did it on his own. That was Pedro beating his man." And Sosa shrugged again, saying, "that was last week." Saturday, with No.

6 West Virginia in town, could be even more challenging. The Mountaineers play a 3-3-5 defense, with an unbalanced front that Sosa said is "really unique." Sosa sometimes will see the 6-3, 270-pound Johnny Dingle, who has six sacks. Sometimes he'll see West Virginia's other end, the massive 6-5, 300-pound Keilen Dykes. Sometimes he'll see a linebacker, when West Virginia jumps into a four-man front, and all the time he'll see an aggressive defense. Maligned repeatedly last year, the unit has jumped from 109th in the country in pass defense to fifth this season.

The Mountaineers are playing the nation's fourth-stoutest overall defense and while attention has centered on coach Rich Rodriguez's new coverages, his team also is blitzing more and pressuring the passer much more. "They'll come after you," Teel said, even as he looked ready for that kind of pressure. He does, after all, have Sosa protecting him. And really, that pressure is nothing compared to the pressure of discussing Sosa's spiral. "Oh, he knows I have it," Sosa said, unbowed.

"Like Peyton Manning." By ADITI KINKHABWALA STAFF WRITER PISCATAWAY Pedro Sosa swears he throws a nice ball. Jeremy Zuttah, Sosa's fatboy football teammate, seconds that, saying Sosa's throws are why their fatboy team is undefeated. Mike Fladell, Sosa's rival fatboy quarterback, unwittingly affirms it too in the defensive way he mumbles, "I can throw the ball." Even Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, asked about Sosa's fatboy skills, grins and says, "Yeah, there's some good athletes out there." It's only Mike Teel, hearing of Sosa's boast, who snorts and says, "Let's let him play tackle." Well, Teel is Rutgers' real quarterback. And Sosa when he's not playing the offensive linemen's day-before-the-game game is Teel's left tackle. If Sosa's got some exceptional athleticism, obviously Teel's going to want it focused in one place.

"My job is to protect Teel," Sosa said somberly. Then, just as seriously: "But I do look like Peyton Manning. I can put it on the money. Ask Zuttah." It's a different Sosa these days than the one who came in five years ago, weighing a soft 265 pounds and talking, fellow fifth-year senior Fladell remembers, "never." Sosa "didn't know the offense, didn't know what I was supposed to be doing," and even COLLEGE FOOTBALL when he got into five games as a redshirt freshman, he stepped carefully. Now, seven games into No.

25 Rutgers' season, Sosa is a concrete-block, 6-foot-5, 295-pounder who has started every game since the first of his sophomore year. He's strong, he's fast, he's got nimble feet (see: fatboy football) and he has a well-earned reputation as the Big East's premier left tackle. Schiano said he's a "great" pass protector, a "fine" run blocker and "as consistent as there is in the country." "I love playing next to Pedro," said Fladell, who has started alongside Sosa, at left guard, the past two years. "If I make a mistake, I know he always has my back. He's very intense on the field, but he'll always pat me on the back and say 'Good Sosa, sadly, is not as good at accepting the "good jobs" himself.

A year after Teel was sacked a nation's-least eight times, he's gone down just four times so far. Sosa shrugs and says, "that's my job." Last Thursday, as Rutgers was upsetting then-No. 2 South Florida, Sosa neutralized end George Selvie, who came into the game with 11.5 sacks and 21.5 tackles for loss, and ended it with the exact same numbers. Sosa occasionally got some help, from a cut- -A. RU men hope to see Scarlet fever COLLEGE BASKETBALL By TARA SULLIVAN STAFF WRITER NEW YORK JR Inman watched the fans flooding the field, saw the student sections empty onto the surface of Rutgers Stadium to celebrate the football team's victory over then No.

2-ranked South Florida. "You love to see that as an athlete," the Rutgers junior said of the events of a week ago. "It shows people's appreciation. Those guys deserve it." Inman's hope is to see the same support for the Rutgers men's basketball team, for which he is a starting forward. More precisely, Inman would love for his team to register a win of such magnitude, letting the celebration take care of itself.

But as Inman sat behind a Madison Square Garden table at gers sports last year and the football team is moving back up the rankings again. We have to keep working hard to get to that level." Joynes feels a kinship with the veterans he saw on the football team when he arrived on campus five years ago, guys who hadn't scaled the heights of conference competition, never mind national rankings. This is a chance for him and Inman to lead the basketball team up the same path. "The whole morale of Rutgers athletics has been raised with the success of the football team, and that motivates other programs to do the same," Inman said. "I think what I saw against South Florida give us assurance it can happen, and I think it will happen that way for us." The Rutgers faithful believes in basketball coach Fred Hill in large part because his resume of Jersey- the Big East's annual media day Wednesday, he understood his dream still is a way off, at least in the eyes of league coaches.

The Scarlet Knights are 15th out of 16 teams in a preseason poll, with Georgetown and Louisville tied for first, South Florida last and fellow Jersey entry Seton Hall 13th. Reality says these Scarlet Knights aren't even tops on their own campus, with the football team back in the national poll this week, the women's basketball team coming off a national title appearance and even the baseball team defending a Big East tournament title. "It definitely motivates us," said Byron Joynes, a fifth-year senior center. "It was a great year for Rut While Hofstra can erase much of the disappointment of the 40-3 loss to New Hampshire by winning at Villanova on Saturday, the 6-foot-l, 202-pound senior from Nanuet, N.Y., can spend the rest of the season adding to his record total. In a program that has sent several receivers to pro football, including retired Jet Wayne Chrebet of Garfield, Sullivan's name is at the top, with 212 catches.

That's six more than Steven Jackson had from 1997-2000. Sullivan caught nine passes for 74 yards against New Hampshire, upping his season total to 60 catches for 751 yards and five touchdowns. Sullivan had his own cheering section on his milestone day. Tony Karcich, his coach at St. Joseph, couldn't attend because he was in South Bend, watching the USC-Notre Dame game, but Karcich's wife and several of his assistant coaches joined Sullivan's family and friends in the Hofstra Stadium stands.

Heenehan hits mark Patrick Heenehan, a senior wide receiver from Franklin Lakes, contributed a career-best 109 receiving yards and a touchdown reception in Ithaca College's 44-7 rout of Utica. Heenehan has 51 career catches, good for 26th on Ithaca's all-time list. Albany quarterback Vinny Es-posito, a sophomore from De-marest, completed 11 of 15 passes for 130 yards and two touchdowns and scored on a 1-yard sneak as the Great Danes topped St. Francis 58-21. Esposito already has the seventh-best single-season passing mark in school history with 1,252 yards and a 57.3 completion percentage.

Eric Gormeley, a freshman from Wyckoff who played at Don Bosco, is the starting center at Johns Hopkins University. Murphy is All-MEAC Tony Murphy of Norfolk State, a senior guard from Pater-son, has been named to the All-MEAC preseason first team. RECORD FILE PHOTO Charles Sullivan, a former star at St. Joseph, now has 212 catches for the Hofstra Pride. Murphy averaged 16.5 points last season and has led the Spartans in scoring the last two years.

Tim Norton of Ramsey, a freshman pitcher at William Mary, will play for the North Adams Steeplecats of the New England College Baseball League in the summer. Three teammates of the former St. Joseph star, including Don Bosco graduate Alex Meyers of Pequannock, were members of the Vermont Mountaineers team that won last summer's championship. Alyssa Jaffe, a junior from Montvale and a graduate of Pas-cack Hills, has a 19-7 singles record and a 9-4 doubles mark for the Ithaca College women's tennis team. Brady leads Orange Evan Brady, a senior from Ridgewood, has been named a tri-captain of the Syracuse lacrosse team.

Brady, a captain as a junior, has appeared in 31 games in his career and has accumulated 40 ground balls, including 16 last season. Mafka Scifo, a freshman midfielder from River Edge, contributed a goal and an assist as Trinity College's women's soccer team qualified for the New England Small College Conference tournament for the first time since 2003. Karolina Kowalski, a junior setter from North Arlington, had 22 digs and 46 assists as the Fair-leigh Dickinson women's volleyball team improved to 11-11 by winning two of three games last week. E-mail: rowenorthjersey.com born-and-bred work ethic parallels that of football coach Greg Schiano. The two friends attend each other's games whenever possible and Schiano even delivered a motivational speech to the hoops players last winter, in which he invoked the football team's turnaround success, the inspirational movie "Rocky" and the now-famous football mantra of "Keep Chopping." Hill can only hope for the same patience Schiano received back when his team was losing league games by 50-plus points.

"I can look at the blueprint in football and understand it's a process," Hill said. "Greg had to be patient and true to his beliefs, and now you're seeing success. That's what we have to do. "Looking from the outside, I'm sure there are people who want it to happen overnight, but when you get out of character, the pitfall is that you can go backward. We want to be patient and build it the right way.

It might not be reflected yet in wins and losses, but we are going forward." The 16 quality teams crowding the basketball picture compared to the eight teams in the football race make the basketball leap to the upper echelon considerably harder. That's how Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun sees it, and considering his 25 years of experience building a basketball power that only recently has welcomed the football team into the national polls, he knows of what he speaks. "Where are those other 14 schools going?" Calhoun asked after noting Rutgers' preseason spot at No. 15. "None of us plan to stop working hard.

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