PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- Rutgers forward Deshawn Freeman and coach Steve Pikiell had some discussions about Freemans zero-rebound effort against Niagara, and whatever was said made a difference.Freeman followed up with 13 points and a career-high 15 rebounds as Rutgers defeated North Texas 66-53 in the Scarlet Knight Showcase on Wednesday night.I had no energy (against Niagara), said Freeman, who got his third double-double of the season. Grabbing rebounds gives me a lot of energy.Nigel Johnson and Mike Williams had 10 points each as the Scarlet Knights moved to 5-0 for the first time since 2000-01.Shane Temara had a career-high 16 points for the Mean Green (1-3), who lost their third straight. Deckie Johnson added 13 points and seven rebounds. North Texas played without second-leading scorer Jeremy Combs, who was resting a sore ankle.Trailing 25-24, Rutgers scored seven straight to start the second half and take the lead for good. Leading 43-40, the Scarlet Knights put it away with an 18-2 run to go up 61-42 with 2:52 remaining.The win was keyed by a hard-nosed defensive effort, which Pikiell preaches.I know you would say this game was a little bit ugly but I think it was beautiful, Pikiell said. We couldnt score and it didnt matter.North Texas coach Tony Benford liked how his team hung tough while playing short-handed.I thought we played hard, he said. We are down five scholarship guys. When we get our whole team back, we will be very competitive.BIG PICTURENorth Texas: The Mean Green allowed a season-low in points by holding Rutgers to 36.5 percent shooting (23 of 63), but only shot 33.3 percent (19 of 57) and were outrebounded 53-38. We wanted to do everything we could to control tempo and stay in the game, Benford said. I thought we did that early on, but we couldnt keep them off the glass.Rutgers: The Scarlet Knights have not defeated a team with a winning record yet, but their best start in 16 years earned them one vote in the AP poll. Rutgers has not been ranked since it finished No. 18 in the final poll of 1978-79. We dont talk about that, we talk about the team were playing and what we need to do, Pikiell said. People look at records, I look at tape. Rutgers entered the game among the national leaders in offensive rebounding (fifth, 18.25), rebounding margin (seventh, 18.5), and total rebounds (ninth, 48.5).GOOD AND BADThe 66 points tied a season-low for Rutgers and the 53 were the least it allowed this season.UGLY OFFENSERutgers made its first 3-pointer then missed 13 straight and finished 3 for 20 from behind the arc. North Texas had eight shots blocked, including five by Candido Sa.PLEASED TO MEET YOUThis was the first meeting between the two schools, and it left North Texas 1-10 against Big Ten competition.PIKIELL PERFECTAt 5-0, Pikiell continued to add to the best start for a Scarlet Knights coach beginning his tenure.UP NEXTNorth Texas: The Mean Green hosts Niagara on Friday to kick off a five-game homestand. North Texas plays nine of its first 12 games at home.Rutgers: The Scarlet Knights host Hartford Friday, and will attempt to go 6-0 for the first time since 1975-76, when the schools lone Final Four team won its first 31 games. Custom Baltimore Ravens Jerseys . Pert has formerly spent time as an assistant coach with Cardiff City, Coventry City, and Bahrain mens national team. "Martyn is a highly-respected coach with experience at the top levels in England," said Whitecaps FC head coach Carl Robinson. Custom Football Jerseys Online . How great will be revealed in the next couple of days at the board of governors meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif. http://www.footballcustomjerseys.com/custom-cincinnati-bengals-jerseys-798c.html . Once again Jordan Cieciwa (@FitCityJordan) and I (@LynchOnSports) go head to head in our picks. Last weekend at UFC Fight Night 32 my #TeamLynch got the best of #TeamJC by a score of 9-6. Let us know which side youre on for UFC 167 use the hashtag #TeamLynch or #TeamJC on Twitter. Discount Custom Football Jerseys . Hargreaves began his career in 2008 with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and has played with the Edmonton Eskimos and last season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Wholesale Custom Football Jerseys . But Bourque, who has missed three games with a lower-body injury, wont be in the lineup when the Habs travel to Buffalo to take on the Sabres on Wednesday. Scattered thinly across South Africa is a clandestine group that dare not speak its name, made up of malcontents, cheroot-smokers, conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers. I write of the Colin Ingram Appreciation Society, or CAS for short.Here is a clan that goes about the serious and not-so-serious business of appreciation far from prying eyes, a world of prompts, winks and secret handshakes. Wherever Ingram takes to the crease, the society is in full session: runs are counted carefully, boundaries celebrated with high-fives. Every innings is deconstructed breathlessly. WhatsApp messages, frequently adjectivally heavy, detail his every move.Ingram once appeared to be of the manner born. His father - remarkably, this is true - was a Protea farmer in the mountains and kloofs north-west of Port Elizabeth, so Ingram had portent-filled beginnings. He was educated at Woodridge High, which also produced Mark Rushmere, another neglected soul. Once out of school, Ingram hauled himself off, of all places, to the fledgling academy in Bloemfontein, to better to understand himself and his game.Seldom can a crisper hitter of a cricket ball have graced the domestic scene, yet Ingram has precious little to show for it. His 31 ODIs came with three catch-your-eye centuries (one against Zimbabwe, two against Pakistan) but at an average of not much above 30 - meagre rewards for a batsman of his apparent class.Detractors say he didnt have enough of the right stuff, while members of CAS murmur wistfully that he was never given his due. Without anyone really noticing, players cut from similar cloth, like David Miller and Rilee Rossouw, nudged in front and Ingram was left to rue chances not taken. He signed a three-year Kolpak deal with Glamorgan in 2014, so his easy joys are now confined to playing for the Eastern Cape-based Warriors, whom he captains loyally and with unrecognised intelligence.Ingram is possibly more of a representative figure than folk realise. Once was a time when the Eastern Cape and Border produced proper cricketers. These two provinces never had the playing stocks of, say, a Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal or Western Province, but Justin Kemp, Makhaya Ntini, Daryll Cullinan, Mark Boucher, Pieter Strydom, Monde Zondeki and Johan Botha all came from there or thereabouts, beneficiaries of a good system with good coaches and a long tradition players were eager to honour. Kepler Wessels, returning from his flirt with Australia in the late 1980s, dragged the then Eastern Province by sheer force of will to the Currie Cup title, and ten years later they were still a force to be reckoned with. Sensing opportunity, Richard Pybus took Border to two first-class fiinals in the late 1990s.dddddddddddd A visit to Buffalo Park, with Boucher pouring all manner of filth into your ear, and Vasbert Drakes and Ntini gunning for you at the other end, was a prospect relished by only the very best.Nowadays Warriors (an amalgamation of Border and Eastern Province) muddle along gamely without really troubling anyone. Hand in hand with their eclipse has been the decline of player stocks and the slow sinking of schools. Once Grey High (Port Elizabeth), Queens College (Queenstown) or Selborne (East London) steamrollered much in their path. No more. Too much administrative fiddling, too much administrative corruption (featuring black and white) and too much insecurity means that the economically depressed region ploughs on rather than thrives. A neighbouring associate union, Kei, has been dissolved entirely, while just last week Jesse Chellan, resigned after 17 months as chief executive officer of Eastern Province. The franchise appears to be financially stable, but this doesnt mean that theres a trustworthy hand on the tiller or any particular direction in which to head. Perhaps the most graphic illustration of the regions decline comes in the form of Botha, three years older than Ingram but part of the same feisty generation. Botha, lest we forget, captained South Africa to a 4-1 ODI series victory over Australia in early 2009, taking over from the injured Graeme Smith, who returned home after the Test series because of a fractured elbow. For a year or three he was a shoo-in for the ODI side, Corrie van Zyl, the temporary coach, using him cleverly at the 2011 World Cup. Soon afterwards, though, Bothas charms began to fade, his decline a perfect metaphor for the descent into mediocrity of the region from which he comes.As for Ingram, he turned 31 a week ago, and his best years might lie ahead. Last year he only played five first-class matches for Warriors, scoring 214 runs at 26.75, but the season before that he scored 852 runs in ten matches at 53.25. In what remains an astounding example of cognitive dissonance, his claims were hardly discussed. He has effectively become South African crickets invisible man. With everyone bemoaning the current talent exodus, mainly for New Zealand, no one is asking why players like Ingram and Botha were allowed to drift away because important people at national level were simply too lazy to care.Then again, CAS continue to hold monthly meetings. They plot, they scheme. With the righteous indignation of true believers, they know that their day will come. ' ' '