Rutgers men learning how to win consistently BY MIKE McDONALD Staff Writer The Rutgers University men’s basketball team (6-5) is on a roll.After beating Lehigh University this past Friday, the team has now won five straight games, which is their longest winning streak since the 2003-04 season. First-year head coach Fred Hill believes it is toughness and pride that has carried his team on this streak. “We try to teach our guys how to play hard with toughness, passion and pride, and to play together and work really hard,” he said. “We tell them all the time that if you do those things then everything else takes care of itself. They have responded extremely well and we are certainly making strides and getting better, and we just have to continue to do that on a daily basis.” The coach also talks about basketball players needing to learn what to do when the team is not shooting the ball particularly well. He feels his team is beginning to mature and the result has been success in making big plays. “I think as you grow, and we talk about going through the process, we talk about ‘you’re not always going to shoot the ball well.’ You have to make big plays,” the coach said. “Your shots aren’t always going to drop for you, but if you make big plays and hold on to win ball games, you’ve got to learn how to win. And I think that’s what we’re in the process of trying to do, is to learn how to win when we don’t shoot well, and try to make big plays. “We’re getting better, we’re learning, we’re growing,” added Hill. The team’s latest win was not without a little tension, when they were down 10 with just over eight minutes remaining in the game, but Hill was able to rally his team. “I reminded them of the things this program stands for — toughness, togetherness, hard work, passion and pride. I wrote those on the board and said, ‘This is what we stand for and these are the five things that we have to do to be better,’ ” he said. “Certainly they responded, and in the last eight minutes I don’t think that we could have played any better as a team.” Starring in the game was senior guard Marquis Webb, of Paterson, who scored 14 points. Next for Rutgers will be a true test of how good this squad is. Rutgers has to face the University of North Carolina, ranked No. 2 in the AP Top 25, in Chapel Hill, N.C. The game is scheduled for tomorrow night at 7 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN2. The coach is not afraid to admit a little discomfort in playing one of college basketball’s perennial powerhouses. “I feel much better about our team now, and I think we have made strides, but again, we have a major challenge in front of us going down to North Carolina and playing them at their place,” he said. “It’s going to be a great experience, and you love games like that. You just toss the ball up, go play and you see what happens. We will learn from it whether we can go down and pull off an upset, or whether we go down there and just learn a lot more about our team.”