PISCATAWAY -- Chris Ash believes in tough love, but his halftime speech leaned more toward tough than love.

Actually, he didn't even wait until halftime to give an earful to the Rutgers football team.

It happened six minutes into a 52-14 victory against Howard when Rutgers trailed by 14 points after a shocking start to Ash's home debut Saturday in front of 45,245 at High Point Solutions Stadium.

"It's hard not to be ticked off," Ash said, "but I was ticked off. It's hard not to be. I failed that one. But we kept coaching and coaching and coaching, and got a few things adjusted as we went through the game and played much better."

Ash clearly wasn't satisfied even after Rutgers tied the score at 14-14 by halftime. A missed 41-yard field goal to end the first half only further soured the taste.

Nobody mentioned a flipped table or a spilled water cooler, but don't rule it out. Even the team captains stayed mostly silent in the locker room.

"He's going to tell you the truth," halfback Robert Martin said. "He's not going to B.S. you. He's going to tell you what you don't want to hear and what you want to hear. He wants to win. He wants to compete at a high level. That's what we appreciate. If it's got to be yelling, we're all going to take it and not back down and listen to what he has to say."

At one point, Howard, which is generally considered one of the worst teams at the FCS level, held huge advantages of 8-0 in first downs and 215-15 in total yards of offense.

"I just couldn't believe it," said wide receiver Janarion Grant, who sparked the comeback with three touchdowns. "I was kind of shocked. We just played slow on both sides of ball. Once we got through that half, we came in and talked and the coaches let us know what we were messing up and we were making corrections."

Wait. Talked or yelled?

"Both," Grant said, breaking into a devilish grin. "It was crazy. We weren't expecting it. We should be expecting it, but we weren't."

Howard sandwiched a 38-yard touchdown pass and a 15-yard touchdown run around a one-play Rutgers' drive that ended with a tipped pass interception by Chris Laviano off the hands of wide receiver Carlton Agudosi.

"He was getting into it," Agudosi said of Ash, "but we needed that. We came out slow and we needed a pick-me-up."

The fire and brimstone approach was missing from Rutgers over the last few years, as Ash's predecessor Kyle Flood seemed to be to take the term players' coach to a new extreme and rarely deviated from showing an even keel to the public.

"We needed to get a fire lit under this football team and get them motivated to go in the second half," Ash said. "They were down by halftime with the way they played."

One thing that Ash didn't do was veer from the game plan in an act of desperation.

"It was emotional to say the least to start the game the way we started down 14-0 really fast," Ash said. "You do what you want the players to do: You can't panic. You can't flip out.

"You've got to stay with the plan, stay with the course and keep coaching, keep adjusting and that's what we did and that's what our players did and the end result is what we wanted."

Rutgers responded with 38 second-half points as part of the 52 unanswered, as the defense tightened up to allow one first down and five yards of offense over the final two quarters.

"Coach came at us at halftime real intense," cornerback Isaiah Wharton said, "just because he knows the team that we can be. He felt like he wasn't seeing it. He's a real intense guy and he definitely knows how to lead a group of kids. We all responded to it well and we all bought into it right after."

LISTEN: Episode 2 of NJ.com's Rutgers Football podcast

Rebuilding Rutgers: From The Ashes takes you inside the new football regime. This episode introduces and unravels The Spread, an increasingly popular offense Rutgers is running for the first time.

Ryan Dunleavy may be reached at rdunleavy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.