Rutgers thwarts No. 3 Louisville

You can hold a football program down for only so long.

In Rutgers’ case, it was 137 seasons.

Do you believe in exit ramps?

Getting a second chance to redeem himself and make school history, Jeremy Ito kicked a 28-yard field goal with 13 seconds left Thursday night to lift No. 15 Rutgers to a 28-25 Big East Conference victory over No. 3 Louisville in front of 44,111, the largest crowd ever to squish its way into Rutgers Stadium.

Thirty years from now, 80,000 Rutgers fans will say they witnessed it -- they only wish.

Ito, a junior who played at Redlands High and is nicknamed “the Judge,” put the gavel down at around 11 p.m. local time after getting the kind of do-over you only get in your dreams.

Ito missed on his first attempt to win it, from 33 yards, but Louisville’s William Gay jumped offside on the kick, handing a reprieve to Ito and the screamed-out-scarlet crowd.

Ito said he may have been distracted on his first kick by seeing Gay jump offside.

“I probably got a little spooked by the penalty,” Ito said.

Ito wasn’t rattled on his second try, kicking Rutgers to its most important win since beating Princeton, 6-4, in 1869 -- the first intercollegiate game ever played.

“As soon as it hits your foot you know it’s going through,” Ito said. “I actually didn’t watch it go through.”

And what did it mean?

“Everything, right now,” Ito said.

Ito had tied the score at 25-25 with 10:13 left, after a 46-yard field goal.

Rutgers’ win set off a red-corpuscle surge toward the stadium floor -- the goal posts were protected from a ransacking by a horseshoe of yellow-clad security guards.

“I’m sober now,” one Rutgers student said as he jostled his way down an aisle toward the field. “But I may not be for long.”

Rutgers’ win put the New Jersey state school on the football map and this year’s national championship race in a state of flux.

Louisville (8-1) entered the game at No. 3 in the Bowl Championship Series standings with a good shot to take over the No. 2 spot after next week’s game involving Ohio State and Michigan -- the nation’s top two teams.

Louisville’s loss gave one-loss teams across the country -- Florida, Texas, Auburn, USC, California, Notre Dame -- hope that they might now secure the No. 2 position in the BCS standings.

All because of Rutgers?

“I’m still trying to figure it out, what it all means,” said sophomore tailback Ray Rice, who rushed for 131 yards in 22 carries.

“It might be a few days before we know what it means. Right now, we’re in the middle of it.”

Rutgers improved to 9-0 and will rise from its No. 13 BCS position, but the team probably started too low in the polls to go 12-0 and advance to the BCS title game.

That topic, for now at least, gave way to a greater euphoria.

Fullback Brian Leonard was in a haze. “I found myself in the locker room, not knowing where I was going,” he said afterward. “It think it will hit me tomorrow.”

It happened here, off Exit 9, off the New Jersey Turnpike, 45 minutes south of Manhattan.

Rutgers spotted Louisville a 25-7 first-half lead but never panicked, pecking away at the deficit until it disappeared.

Rutgers’ last lead in the game was its first.

The Rutgers’ defense, after giving up 213 first-half yards to Louisville’s high-powered offense, gave up only 53 to the Cardinals in the second half.

Louisville entered the game averaging 39.4 points and 492.6 yards.

“They outplayed us in the second half,” Louisville running back Kolby Smith said. “They wanted it more than we did.”

Rutgers seemed on the verge, several times, of letting the game slip away but never did.

The turning point came in the third quarter.

Trailing, 25-14, quarterback Mike Teel passed to Kenny Britt across the middle for a 67-yard play. Britt was stripped of the ball inside the five-yard line but recovered his fumble at the four.

Rice ran it in from there, and Teel passed to Dennis Campbell for the two-point conversion to cut the deficit to 25-22.

After Ito tied the score, the Rutgers’ defense forced a punt, with the Scarlet Knights taking over at their nine with 5:28 left.

From there, they drove 80 yards in 11 plays, using 5 minutes 15 seconds before ending it with Ito’s game-winner.

“It was just sticking to what you’ve done all year long,” Teel said of the drive.

Sixth-year Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano, a New Jersey native, may have been the only man alive who thought Rutgers could pull this off.

“Some day we will get to be the best,” he said. “This is a great step in that direction.”

How far has the program come?

Thursday’s win was Rutgers’ first over a ranked opponent since 1988.

Once, it was so bad that schools would fly across country for the chance to play Rutgers.

In 2001, California’s scheduled Sept. 15 game in Piscataway was postponed because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. When it came time to play the game at the end of the year, on Nov. 23, Cal was 0-10 and Rutgers was 2-8. Rutgers asked Cal if it wanted to cancel the game.

No way! Cal flew coast to coast and scored its only victory of the season, 20-10.

Rutgers was so feel-sorry-for sad that in 1998, after a 5-6 season, Big East coaches voted Terry Shea its coach of the year award, figuring 5-6 was about as good as you could do at Rutgers.

In 2001, West Virginia beat Rutgers, 80-7. It was 59-0 at the half.

Rutgers lost to Miami, 55-0, in 1999 and to Notre Dame, 62-0, in 1996.

The 2000 edition gave up a touchdown every 16 snaps.

Things have changed.

Thursday, the Empire State Building was illuminated in red, a scarlet beacon to its adopted neighbor.

“It’s amazing,” defensive tackle Eric Foster said 40 minutes after the game, seated on a stool in the Rutgers’ locker room, still dressed in his uniform.

“We had faith in Coach Schiano. He said our day was going to come.”

For the record, that day is here.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com

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The road ahead

Rutgers’ remaining schedule:

*--* DATE OPPONENT Nov. 18 at Cincinnati (5-4) Nov. 25 Syracuse (3-6) Dec. 2 at No. 10 West Virginia (7-1)

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