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Rutgers has finalized a home-and-home series with Washington State for 2014 and 2015, but coach Kyle Flood said future scheduling was made more challenging after he claimed two SEC schools declined the chance to play the Scarlet Knights.

(John O'Boyle/The Star-Ledger)

Kyle Flood managed to turn a couple of routine announcements today into something much spicier when the Rutgers coach took a well-measured shot at the SEC because two schools from that conference, he claimed, wanted no part of scheduling future games against his team.

In between completing his schedules for 2014 and 2015 by finalizing a home-and-home series with Washington State, Flood also officially announced the expected arrival of two fifth-year senior transfers who could start immediately this fall.

Lewis Toler, who started 36 of 37 games at cornerback at Western Michigan the past three seasons, is expected to solidify the Scarlet Knights’ young secondary with his arrival. He will have one year of immediate eligibility as a graduate student transfer.

Nick Marsh, who handled kickoffs for Utah but was stuck behind one of the best punters in the country last season (Sean Sellwood), is expected to handle both duties for Rutgers this fall. He is also a graduate student transfer with one year of immediate eligibility.

Between that and the series against Washington State – the Scarlet Knights will play the Cougars in Seattle on Aug. 29, 2014 in their first game as a member of the Big Ten, with the Pac-12 school playing at Piscataway on Sept. 12, 2015 – Flood’s news day seemed complete.

But when asked about the difficulty of getting series like the one against Washington State, he took a swipe at the mighty SEC, though, saying "there were a couple teams that were available that weren’t willing to play us. I’m not going to name names."

Rutgers will complete a two-game series with Arkansas of the SEC this season in Piscataway.

“I think it’s hard,” Flood said of scheduling quality non-conference opponents. “When you have a program that is competitive the way we are (Rutgers won at Arkansas last season) and has achieved on the level that we have it’s not always going to be easy to get games and find teams willing to play you in a home and home setting.

“We were very excited to play Arkansas home and home and that series started last year in Arkansas and we’ll play them up here in Piscataway this year.

“But to be honest with you, there were other SEC teams that wouldn’t play us and that’s unfortunate because I know they like to come up here and recruit and we certainly would like the opportunity to play them on their field as we go out and recruit. I think our players saw last year when we played Arkansas and we played the rest of our schedule that we can compete with anyone in the country.”

Flood said his “only stipulation” in future scheduling discussions is that “I wanted it to be a home and home.”

With UCLA, Miami and Kansas on future schedules, he said Rutgers was looking for more quality non-conference competition.

“We are not going to limit ourselves in terms of who is out and will give us an opportunity to play,” he said. “I can’t say that everyone else feels the same way.”