NJ.com selects one class of 2014 Rutgers commit to highlight per week as our Rutgers football commit of the week. The award is presented to the Rutgers commit that puts forth the top on-field performance throughout the previous weekend. Productivity, response to adversity, versatility, game magnitude, overall impact, strength of opponent and whether the committed player's team won the game or not will factor in as criteria for the award.
This week's award goes to St. Peter's Prep (Jersey City, N.J.) running back Jonathan Hilliman, who helped his team to the NJSIAA Non-public, Group IV finals while also breaking his team's single season rushing record previously held by current Rutgers running back Savon Huggins. Donald Bedell, Kam Lott, Sidney Gopre and Logan Lister all made strong cases for winning the award, but Hilliman's two-in-one help him edge out a handful of his future teammates.
But it didn't come easy.
"Offensively, it was really slow at first," said Hilliman. "I can't say I was too happy with the performance in the first half of that game. We kind of beat ourselves in the first half. We were up 7-0 thanks to Corey (Caddle) catching the ball in the back of the end zone. But they had a good defensive gameplan. I can't front on that. They loaded the box a lot."
However, the game proved to be a tale of two halves, as Hillman bounced back with a strong second half performance, which encompassed each of his three scores.
"In the second half, we came out very strong scoring 27 points. We were able to stretch them out and do a lot of things," he said. "We ran a lot of power, iso, those plays are bangers. And we were able to get to the edge when we wanted to. Then we were able to beat them with play-action. Things started to really open up. The playbook got really simple once we started to run the ball."
Runner-Up: Donald Bedell, DE, Rumson Fair Haven (Rumson, N.J.): Rumson defeated Rahway (N.J) 28-21 in the second round of the NJSIAA Central Group II playoffs. Bedell was a terror, accumulating 12 tackles and a sack. He has 24 tackles and two sacks throughout the first two rounds of the playoffs, and will lead his team into the sectional final against Weequahic (Newark, N.J.) in two weeks.
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