Vivian Stringer is making the rounds talking about her new book, "Standing Tall." Football players and fans -- at RU and elsewhere -- can learn many lessons from this classy coach who is pushing hard with her Rutgers team for another strong season finish. A lot of the attention is not on this year -- it is on the future of the Stringer program, and Coach Stringer has five more reasons to stand tall: a recruiting class that includes Brooklyn Pope of Fort Worth, Texas, and April Sykes of Mississippi. The group includes a total of five All Americans. As Harvey Araton put it in The Times this morning: Thank you Don Imus.
“He pretty much put Rutgers on the map,” said Janice Pope, the mother of Brooklyn.
Not to suggest that Rutgers wasn’t a national power and nearly a national champion before the uproar caused by Imus last April. Not to say that Stringer had not always landed players from afar, just not at the magnetic level of Connecticut and Tennessee.
If the projections for the Rutgers freshman class of 2008-9 are accurate, Auriemma and Pat Summitt may no longer be in a recruiting league of their own. “Basically, we were hoping to get three,” said Carlene Mitchell, Stringer’s assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. “The chips just fell.”
The blue chips, she meant.
Stringer did a video interview for Forbes.com. Asked what she tells new players about the Imus episode, Coach Stringer said: "We define who we are....these young ladies are great students...they presented themselves in a poised, a class way ... how could I not be proud and extremely happy because they stood so tall."
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