When she took the job, Kristen Butler expected it might take a while.

The new Rutgers softball coach inherited a team coming off three losing seasons during which it was a combined 44 games under .500. Butler had done rebuilds before – her work turning around Toledo’s program is what brought her here – and she was ready to begin another one.

The outlook changed, though, once she got to campus and saw her players.

“This team is much more talented than what was on paper last year,” Butler said. “When I got them, I was actually very excited. So what’s the factor that we need to do to make them perform to their abilities?

“Our biggest thing this year has been attitude and effort. You come in and you get a new group of girls. You didn’t recruit many of them. You’ve got to get from them the most that you can get from them.”

It’s working. Butler’s team has been the surprise of the spring at Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights enter Tuesday’s midweek conference doubleheader against Maryland in Piscataway at 22-20 overall and 6-9 in the Big Ten, having climbed into the league’s first division and a tie for sixth place thanks to back-to-back weekend series wins over Penn State and Iowa.

And with all eight of their remaining league games coming against teams behind them in the standings, Butler’s team will have a chance to make even more noise down the stretch as they seek the program’s first winning season since 2015.

“We’ve worked so hard, going all out,” junior infielder Anyssa Iliopoulos said. “We’ve taken that intensity to a new level, expecting more from ourselves. The accountability and expectation has gotten a lot better this year, and it carries over to the games.”

‘SHE CAN PROVE IT’

The lineup of walk-up songs and between-innings music at the RU Softball Complex is pretty current, but the operations team might want to add a throwback: Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.”

And maybe have the Rutgers band perform it for tape?

Before Butler was a coach, she was a player. A very good one, too. The Orlando native was a four-year starter at Florida, primarily as a catcher, and was the SEC’s player of the year in 2006, setting a program home run record. She then played professionally in the National Professional Fastpitch League, setting more records, and the Japan Women’s Softball League.

The JWSL is a barnstorming league. The teams travel to different cities each week and play a series of games in front of thousands of fans. Each team is sponsored by a corporation – Butler played for Denso, an automotive company – with its employees getting off work and flooding the stadium to cheer for their team. There are even bands, such as the one that would play Butler’s walk-up song, the aforementioned “Welcome to the Jungle,” when she approached the plate.

Butler set a national record for Denso, becoming the first player in league history to hit three home runs in a game and earning top player honors.

“You get this big trophy, and some sort of fruit or vegetable that city is known for,” she recalled. “The owner of my team comes running up to me at the end of the game and just starts yelling, screaming. I thought he was mad at me, but he was just excited that I was able to break the record and put our team in the record books.”

Senior shortstop Jess Hughes said she has talked to Butler about her time in Japan, and the coach has taught them a little Japanese (Butler joked she might yell at the team in Japanese in her head from time to time). Butler’s past success has had an impact on her current team, Hughes said.

“She’s very intelligent about the game. Just the little things. She knows what to do, what to say,” said Hughes, the team’s leading hitter and a former state player of the year at Washington Township High. “As a team, we’ve gotten smarter. She’s the kind of coach that can show you what to do. She can prove it. … It’s inspiring to have a coach like that.”

‘CHANGE OUR MOMENTUM’

Butler, who came to Rutgers after four years as Toledo’s head coach and past assistant stints at Charleston Southern, Mississippi Valley State and Florida, established a team mantra when she arrived.

“Get your armor on,” she said. What does it mean? “Bringing your best every day. Your best mindset, your best skillset, your best work ethic. Every day, you’ve got to bring that armor, because you’re going into battle every day.”

The start of Big Ten play provided a challenge on that front. Rutgers got off to a solid start in non-conference play, going 15-12 away from home with the highlight a shutout win at Virginia. But the Scarlet Knights were swept by first-place Northwestern and second-place Michigan to start the conference slate, with three of the defeats coming by mercy rule.

Rutgers then managed to salvage a game at Ohio State with an extra innings in early April to stop the bleeding and could have taken the series with a few breaks in a close loss to open the three-game set.

“We realized we can really do damage,” Iliopoulos said, “especially in the Big Ten.”

The Scarlet Knights swept Penn State on the road two weekends ago and took two of three from Iowa at home this past weekend. After Tuesday’s doubleheader with Maryland, they are on the road at Indiana this weekend before closing out the regular season at home against Michigan State.

“We’ve just tried to change our momentum from the past,” Hughes said. “We played Michigan, we played Northwestern, then we took one from Ohio State and that was very exciting. We just kept it going. We just try to take it game by game, day by day, inning by inning, and just focus on the little things.”

An NCAA Tournament berth is not on the radar for now – Rutgers is No. 83 in RPI entering the week – but the Scarlet Knights are well on their way to qualifying for the conference tournament on May 9-11 at Indiana, which has a 12-team single-elimination format.

“The girls have really started to figure out what it’s about, started to figure out the game a little bit better and execute what their role is,” Butler said.

‘A BRIGHT FUTURE’

The sentiment around the program?

“If we can compete now,” Butler said, “what are we going to do down the road?”

Butler said a big reason why she chose to leave Toledo, where she had just led the Rockets to their first winning season in 22 years and earned MAC coach of the year honors, was athletics director Pat Hobbs and deputy athletics director Sarah Baumgartner.

“Their vision for this program, their enthusiasm and encouragement and passion for athletics, it was really what encouraged me and inspired me to take the position,” Butler said.

The vision appears on its way.

Facilities upgrades are coming. Construction on a new locker room in the RAC is expected later this year, and the plan is for Rutgers to install a turf field before next season.

Butler has recruited well since she arrived, and there is already young talent in the program. Rutgers is currently expected to return five of its top seven hitters next season and has two budding freshmen stars.

Pitcher Corah Price, who was initially committed to Toledo but then followed Butler here, has a 2.96 ERA this season and has emerged as the program’s ace of the future while sharing time in the circle with senior Whitney Jones. Catcher Katie Wingert, who was recruited by former coach Jay Nelson, is third on the team in hitting and has been sensational defensively.

Rutgers has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 1994. Butler believes the Scarlet Knights can change that and become a nationally-ranked program. And maybe sooner than you’d think.

“This program has a bright future,” Hughes said.

James Kratch may be reached at jkratch@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JamesKratch. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.