By James Kratch | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Chris Ash wants his Rutgers football team to be able to do what Jay Wright's Villanova basketball team does.

Well, sort of.

It's no secret the Scarlet Knights' offense needs to produce more – a significant amount more – this fall in order for Rutgers to take the next step in Ash's third season and contend for a 6-6 record and the bowl invitation that would come with that achievement. Ash and his staff have identified explosive plays, or chunk plays as offensive coordinator John McNulty called them earlier this spring, as a key area that needs improvement. Ash said you only have to look at the newly-crowned national champion Wildcats to understand why.

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

"Villanova wins a national championship. Why? Well, they hit a lot of 3-pointers," Ash said after the Scarlet-White Game concluded spring practice with a 132-132 tie (and no, Rutgers wasn't that explosive; credit the special scoring system).

“Big plays. Offensively, if we’re going to go out and perform the way we want, help our football team change results, we have to get more explosive plays.”

Villanova led the nation in scoring in 2017-18 and was second in 3-pointers made. Rutgers was deep in the back nationally with just 61 explosive plays, the industry-standard definition for which is a run play of 10-plus yards or a pass play of 20-plus. The Scarlet Knights had 49 runs of 10-plus yards and just 12 pass plays of 20-plays.

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There were plenty of standout plays from this year's @RFootball Scarlet/White game - check them out here, as well as postgame thoughts from Bo Melton, Art Sitkowski, Gio Rescigno, Travis Vokolek and KJ Gray #TheHunt pic.twitter.com/lwlXq2cpD8 — RVision (@RVisionRU) April 15, 2018

@RVisionRU

Rutgers had two explosive runs in the spring game and six explosive pass plays. Four of them were hauled in by sophomore wideout Bo Melton, who may be on the verge of a breakout season after a strong spring. The former four-star recruit from Cedar Creek High had five catches for 187 yards with two touchdowns.

“Hopefully he can give what he did today. Get behind some guys and we can connect on some deep balls and have some more explosive plays,” Ash said. “We talk about it a lot in here with our team. I’m hoping Bo Melton can do that for us. Eventually that will loosen some defenses up so we can run the ball better.”

Here are some other takeaways from Ash's press conference following the conclusion of the Scarlet-White Game to cap spring practice:

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FEELING GOOD:

Ash opened his press conference by, knock on wood, discussing the relatively-pristine health of his team at this point.

“The best thing about it is we came out healthy,” Ash said. “No major injuries, and that’s really the story of the spring.”

Rutgers had several players limited with injuries in the spring and accumulated its share of bumps and bruises along the way, but the only major injury of note was a dislocated elbow for weakside linebacker Trevor Morris. He, and everyone else, is expected to be ready for the start of training camp in August. Ash also said last week no players had suffered concussions this spring.

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QUARTERBACKS:

Gio Rescigno and Art Sitkowski took almost all the first-team quarterback snaps with Johnathan Lewis mostly working with the second-team, but Ash said no one should read into that.

“No, that was just kind of the rotation,” he said. “We’ve had a rotation of who was with the 1s the whole spring, and the way it fell in practice No. 15 is how it worked out. There’s nothing into it. This quarterback thing will go into training camp. Hopefully we can get it decided within the first couple of weeks of training camp, but probably more realistically the third week.”

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Ash did make it clear the race is down to those three, and said he feels the quarterback group is “way ahead of where we’ve been the last couple of years.” Most observers would make the case Sitkowski is a foregone conclusion to win the job based on what he showed in Saturday’s game and throughout the spring, but Ash again was not willing to even move an inch in that direction.

“Goods and bads,” Ash said when asked for his assessment of Sitkowski’s big day. “Obviously he made some big plays and had some big throws. I think you can see the type of arm he has. But he also made some mistakes. Had [three] picks, threw a pick on a screen, made an ill-advised pass on third down where it got picked. Had some clock issues, we’ve would’ve had a couple penalties with the clock out there today with him.

“But this kid should be in high school, and we’re putting in a brand new NFL-style offense with him in 15 practices. I thought he did a good job with that, but he made some mistakes and we’ve got to clean those up.”

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DEFENSE:

Rutgers’ defense had six sacks, three interceptions, eight pass break-ups and was dominant for the most part against the offense in red zone drills – a significant weakness from a season ago.

“I’m really pleased with where our No. 1 defense is. You look at the scoreboard and it says whatever it was, 132-132, but there weren’t a lot of points, I don’t think, that our defense gave up,” Ash said. “I thought we flew around to the ball well, we rushed the passer well and we challenged throws a lot. Got our hands on some balls.”

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Rutgers feels good about its depth at linebacker and in the secondary, but the defensive line remains a concern. The Scarlet Knights have a clear-cut starting group – nose guard Julius Turner and end Kevin Wilkins both had big days Saturday; tackle Jon Bateky is entrenched and Elorm Lumor should be the stand-up end – but things are wide open behind them.

“Our biggest concern on defense right now is depth on our d-line,” Ash said. “I really like our front line, our guys up there, I like our linebackers, our secondary, but we need to develop some depth up front. Right now we’re loaded up at linebacker and we’ve got to find a way to get some more guys on the field in different packages, and we’re doing that.”

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How experienced will Rutgers be compared to rest of Big Ten?

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NOT SWEATING RUN GAME:

Rutgers lit it up in the pass game on Saturday, but it didn’t run the ball very well. The Scarlet (offense) had 33 carries for just 90 yards, or 2.7 yards-per-carry, with only two explosive runs. But Ash didn’t spend much time worrying about that – at least at the dais.

“No, the focus wasn’t the running game today. We wanted to focus on the pass game,” he said. “We wanted to go into it with about one every three, four plays we wanted to run it. We just need to work with protection. We want to improve on the things we weren’t so good at last year. We need to protect, so we worked on that today. We need to throw and catch the ball, worked on that today, so that’s what we saw.”

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BOWL STILL THE GOAL?

At the beginning of the spring, Ash made it clear Rutgers would enter 2018 with a clear goal to make a bowl game and return to the postseason for the first time since 2014.

"Year 3, with so many guys coming back, hopefully we can take that next step and win a few more games and get to postseason play," he said. "We have to stay healthy, got to develop guys, got to play more consistent and stuff like that. But we're right on pace to hopefully get that accomplished.

"I've said this several to some people, we're really in my opinion right on course to when I got here. We came in really with a three- or four-year plan and I think we're right on pace for that. "Year 1 is what it is. We were trying to build a culture, set standards, fix some issues. Year 2 we wanted to improve (and) I think we were able to do that."

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John Munson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Well, has anything changed? The answer is no.

Yeah. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but that’s the goal,” Ash said. “I can sit here and say anything is realistic after 15 spring practices, other than the fact we got better. That was the No. 1 objective here this spring.

“Would we like to go to a bowl game at the end of the season? Absolutely. But we’re not focused on that right now. We’re just focused on getting our team closer together, building on our chemistry, our toughness, making them better football players so we can execute our schemes better. Just showing up every day to try to work hard and be the best we can be.”

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MORE RUTGERS SPRING GAME COVERAGE:

* 3 stars and instant takeaways from the game

* QB report card: Art Sitkowski pulling away?

* Here are the recruiting targets Rutgers had at the spring game

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