Brian Brecht’s promises sounded far-fetched to Tom Morr. The Saints goaltender had never heard of Siena — let alone its lacrosse program — when Brecht recruited him in 2008.

But when Brecht made his pitch, he didn’t talk about building a fledgling program. He talked about winning the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference for the first time in program history, earning NCAA tournament berths and mounting championship runs in May.

‘I had to Google Siena’s lacrosse history, and historically, they didn’t look like a team that could make those kind of runs,’ Morr said.

Even though the Saints hadn’t had a winning record since 1983, Brecht had a vision to build the program into a winner. In seven seasons as head coach, Brecht transformed the Siena lacrosse team from a perennial loser in the MAAC to four-time conference champions. Brecht, who was named head coach at Rutgers in June, now hopes he can rebuild the Scarlet Knights using the same blueprint of setting the bar high from the start.

The Rutgers job is a homecoming for the three-time MAAC Coach of the Year. Brecht attended his first lacrosse camp at Rutgers as a sixth-grader who was new to the sport. Later, he helped organize the RU lacrosse camp as a college counselor. And Brecht was an assistant coach for the Scarlet Knights during the 2000-01 season, when he learned his trademark up-and-down style from then-head coach Tom Hayes.

‘Coaching Rutgers is all I could ask for,’ said Brecht. ‘As a Long Island native, it feels good to be back around this area with a shot at something new and exciting.’

As the team’s head coach, Brecht has his work cut out for him. The Scarlet Knights haven’t had a winning record since 2007, and he’ll face heavy competition on the recruiting trail for in-state while facing tough competition in the Big East.

Brecht said it’s special to have the opportunity to revive the program that jump-started his career.

‘Rutgers owes something to our students, fans and alumni,’ Brecht said. ‘We have great facilities and a great attitude here, and that’s a start.’

Recruiting great players is another story, though. Many top recruits in the New Jersey area choose historically competitive programs like Duke, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Syracuse over nearby Rutgers.

The shifting Big East conference is another recruiting headache for Brecht. With Syracuse joining the top programs in the country in a superconference in the ACC, Brecht will have to get creative to sell the playing experience of the Big East to keep the program from becoming an afterthought.

Rutgers midfielder Will Mangan knows what it feels like to be an afterthought. After a third consecutive disappointing season last year, then-Rutgers head coach Jim Stagnitta resigned after 10 years as coach, and his teammates vowed they’d never feel like losers again.

‘It was the same feeling of ‘here were go again,” Mangan said. ‘We all hated it, and we all wanted it to go away.’

Rutgers turned to Brecht to bring in a winning mentality.

Mangan knew the former Siena coach was a ‘hot name’ in the lacrosse world, but like Siena’s Morr, he knew nothing about Siena lacrosse. He said he called a few Saints players just to find out if Brecht was the right man for the job.

Mangan’s fears were repressed after Brecht’s first team meeting. The new head coach’s commitment to playing in the postseason was a welcome message to Mangan and his teammates.’Our goal is to play in the month of May, clear and simple,’ Brecht said. ‘And players need to be on board with that.’

Siena senior attack Bryan Neufeld said Rutgers players should be ‘ready to run’ to execute Brecht’s up-and-down attack. And if the Scarlet Knights players don’t give maximum effort, Morr said they’ll hear about it.

‘I’ve been on the other end of some pretty intense venting sessions,’ Morr said. ‘But he has the right plan (for the team) in mind.’

Part of that plan involves ensuring that Brecht has the right type of player for his program. At Siena, several players, including Morr and Neufeld, found themselves in trouble with campus police.

The next day at practice, Brecht made sure the Saints paid for their mistakes.

‘I let in a goal, or something, and all of a sudden he let me hear about everything he knew about that night,’ Morr said. ‘I shouldn’t have given him the opening to do it because we were running right after that. But he was right, and we learned from that.’

The Scarlet Knights may need some time to adjust to Brecht’s coaching style. But the first-year head coach isn’t holding back to ease the transition. Brecht put together a schedule against some of the best teams in the country with the intent of measuring his program against the best.

In the fall, the Scarlet Knights scrimmaged No. 13 Massachusetts and No. 8 Maryland, two respected lacrosse teams in the country. Though they fell behind early to speedy UMass, Mangan said his team showed flashes of improvement by matching the intensity of the Terrapins.

‘It was a good measure of where we need to be,’ Mangan said of that scrimmage with Maryland.

Brecht knows Rutgers still has a long road ahead before it begins achieving his lofty postseason goals. But as he was at Siena, the head coach is staying positive about his first season at the helm.

Brecht knows the Scarlet Knights have the talent to compete with elite teams. Now, they just have to put it all together to help Brecht begin the rebuilding process and put Rutgers back on the map.

‘We have the pieces here, there’s no question about that,’ Brecht said. ‘I’m excited to see how they all mesh together.’

nctoney@syr.edu

Published on February 15, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Nick: nctoney@syr.edu | @nicktoneytweets