(Courtesy of Rutgers Athletics Communications)

By Tyler Barto
Twitter: @Tyler_Barto
tbarto@trentonian.com

Monday's first edition of the Rundown introduced you to the backstory behind the last-minute decisions of Don Bosco teammates Leonte Carroo and Darius Hamilton, and their reunion with quarterback Gary Nova.

Gary Nova. Leonte Carroo. Darius Hamilton. Rutgers' Don Bosco trio that almost never was. The Rundown: http://t.co/69izRa8bo3. #RFootball
— Tyler Barto (@Tyler_Barto) August 18, 2014

Here's more from the Rutgers players and their Bosco head coach, Greg Toal, that didn't make the cut.

Carroo: “Gary kind of took a step back and I feel like he took a deep breath and he just watched himself and he was in the film room more. He was watching all this offseason and he worked harder. You could tell he just sat down and looked himself in the mirror and told himself, ‘I am a great quarterback,’ which he is."

Hamilton: "That 2012 class really came together and just reached out to one another and said, ‘Listen, we didn’t fall in love with the school for the coach anyway. We fell in love with everyone’s attitude and the fact that we wanted to do something special.’ We all stuck it through, and I’m really happy about it.”

“When you have guys like myself, a highly touted recruit, and then you have Leonte, two kids that played in the U.S. Army All-American Game, and the fact that we all came out of the same high school, things like that are kind of unheard of. It’s definitely crazy, and I definitely had big-time expectations for us coming in here. We’re doing our best job to fill those out.”

Toal: “Gary’s a leader. He’s a guy that definitely should look to have a big year. I can definitely see Gary having a big year this year. From what I understand, they’ve kind of done some different things on offense. I think he’s going to be poised to have a very big year at Rutgers this year.”

“I can remember in summer practice we couldn’t run the ball at all out of the three (at Hamilton). He played three technique. Whatever side he was on, we’d run the other way because he was going to make every tackle to that side. He was pretty amazing. He’s a tremendous technician. When he played down in that All-American game, everybody was talking about it and they couldn’t get their hands on Darius. Darius could actually get their hands out of the way and get his hands where he wanted them. It was just impressive. His technique was as good or better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”