SECTION B THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2016DAILY RECORD :: DAILYRECORD.COM

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Admitting he should have done this before Wednesday, Giants co-

owner John Mara addressed his team’s decision to re-sign kicker

Josh Brown despite knowing of Brown’s domestic violence arrest.

H Standing on a patio while his team practiced behind him, Mara

spoke with reporters for almost 12 minutes, saying the Giants had

been aware Brown was being additionally investigated by the NFL — which

resulted in him being suspended for the Sept. 11 season opener — as well as

allegations of multiple domestic violence incidents between Brown and this

then-wife. H The Giants have faced more than a week of criticism and scrutiny

as details of Brown’s history have been reported, but Mara said Wednesday he

and the organization stand by their decision.

MARA ADDRESSESBROWN SIGNING

ANDREW WEBER-USA TODAY SPORTSAfter a week of criticism and scrutiny, Giants co-owner John Mara (right) said Wednesday he and the organization stand bytheir decision to re-sign kicker Josh Brown despite knowing of Brown’s domestic violence arrest.

Giants brought back kicker despiteknowing of domestic violence arrestTARA SULLIVAN @RECORD_TARA

See MARA, Page 5B

“Based on the facts and circumstances we were aware of at that time,

we were comfortable with our decision to re-sign him. Nothing has

happened in the meantime to make us question that decision.”

JOHN MARA GIANTS CO-OWNER

PISCATAWAY - As senior wide receiver VanceMatthews was interviewed after Rutgers practiceTuesday, star defensive tackle Darius Hamiltoncouldn’t help but needle him as he walked by.

“Oh my God, it’s Vance Matthews,” Hamilton said,pitching his voice up higher than normal. Matthewscouldn’t help but laugh, unable to keep from breakingup as he tried to give a soundbite.

Hamilton’s peers listen to what he has to say,whether he’s having fun or being serious. That’s whyfor the third straight year, he was named one of Rut-gers’ captains in a vote of his teammates. The seniorstandout is the first three-time captain in the historyof the program.

Coach Chris Ash announced the names of the fourcaptains Wednesday morning. All are fifth-year sen-iors. Hamilton is joined by fellow defensive linemanJulian Pinnix-Odrick and two offensive linemen, rightguard Chris Muller and center Derrick Nelson.

Hamilton, who missed most of the 2015 season be-cause of a troublesome knee, nevertheless suited upand played in the third game of the season at PennState following a week of turmoil for the program.

“I wanted to show them (his teammates) that I wasthere for them,” Hamilton said recently.

The pain finally forced him to the sideline, and helater admitted it was an ill-advised move. Still, hiscommitment impressed his teammates.

“There’s nobody else that you’d want next to youwhen it’s time to rise,” said Pinnix-Odrick, a three-time conference all-academic team member who sac-rificed for the team last season by moving over to de-fensive tackle in Hamilton’s absence.

He since has returned to his preferred defensiveend position for this season.

Hamilton has played in 39 games, the most by anycurrent Scarlet Knight. He has 10.5 sacks, includingsix as a junior in 2014. He is on the preseason watchlists for both the Outland Trophy and the Chuck Bed-

Hamilton a captainfor 3rd time

See HAMILTON, Page 6B

Four top leaders now inplace for 2016 seasonJ.P. PELZMAN @JPPELZMAN

RUTGERS FOOTBALL

Seton Hall University’s freshman move-in takesplace Thursday, but one newcomer already has madehimself at home.

By all accounts, rookie guard Myles Powell is poisedto make a big impact for the men’s basketball team thiswinter.

“He had a phenomenal summer,” Hall coach KevinWillard said. “It was tough coming in. He broke his footat (South Kent, Conn.) prep school last year, didn’t play,gained a lot of weight, realized very quickly how out ofshape he was compared to everyone else, and to hiscredit he put the work in.”

Known as a sharpshooter, the former Trenton Catho-lic High School star is down to 205 pounds after comingin at close to 240.

“He’s lost a solid 30 pounds of body fat and gainedmuscle,” Willard said.

Powell is one of three new guards for the Pirates,who spent most of their summer workout time on indi-vidual instruction with the coaching staff. Graduatetransfer Madison Jones and freshman Eron Gordon arethe other two.

“I think they’re all going to help us in their own way,”Willard said. “Each guy brings us a different dynamic,

SETON HALL BASKETBALL

Pirates follow up successful seasonwith a productive summer sessionJERRY CARINO @NJHOOPSHAVEN

AP FILE PHOTOSeton Hall coach Kevin Willard: “What I like about this groupmost of all is that they’re all very motivated.” See PIRATES, Page 6B

Settled somewhat comfortably with the Chicago White Sox’s Double-A affiliate in Birmingham,Alabama, it’s a little easier for Conor Krauss to look back on the past month of minor-leaguebaseball and just shake his head. Krauss played for three teams and two Major League Baseballorganizations in about five weeks, as he struggled to get his fastball back under control.

Krauss knew the source of the problem. It was all in his head.But that didn’t make it any easier for Krauss to resolve the issue which followed him across the

minor-league landscape.“Nothing has a stronger impact on the pitcher on the mound than your mindset,” said Krauss, a

23-year-old righty from Randolph. “No matter how nasty your stuff is, if your mind’s not there,you’re not going to get the job done. I was pretty much fighting with myself.”

The drama actually started in spring training, when Krauss was with Cincinnati, the team that

DOWN ON THE FARM

Randolph’s Krauss on long,winding road to find himselfJANE HAVSY @DAILYRECORDSPTS

NICK FALZERANO/DAYTON DRAGONSConor Krauss of Randolph was a reliever last season for Dayton, the CincinnatiReds’ A-ball affiliate. Krauss is now in the Chicago White Sox organization.See KRAUSS, Page 6B

6B THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2016 DAILY RECORD DAILYRECORD.COM

Player From Position Current team League Avg. G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SBTy Blankmeyer Morristown 2B Billings Mustangs Cincinnati (R) .290 20 62 9 18 1 0 0 8 2 6 3John Brucker Sparta 3B/SS Sussex County Miners Independent .179 23 56 6 10 0 0 0 3 2 12 0Alex DeBellis Kinnelon/

Pope JohnC Sussex County Miners Independent .310 47 168 24 52 13 0 3 22 10 22 0

Rob Kral Randolph C Somerset Patriots Independent .235 56 179 27 42 11 2 2 16 30 42 3Mike Rampone Randolph 2B Tucson Saguaros Independent .367 49 166 51 61 16 3 4 36 24 17 9Mike Schwartz Montville 1B/OF Trois-Rivieres Aigles Independent .274 30 106 13 29 5 0 0 9 13 9 0

W L ERA G GS SV IP H R HR BB SOConor Krauss Randolph RHP Birmingham Barons Chicago White Sox (AA) 0 4 4.81 23 0 0 24.1 22 18 0 26 18Jim Miller Randolph RHP Somerset Patriots Independent 1 0 0.00 14 0 0 14.1 7 2 0 15El’hajj Muhammad CCM RHP Pensacola Blue Wahoos Cincinnati (AA) 3 1 4.47 38 2 0 52.1 53 32 6 20 39Matt Parish Morristown RHP New Jersey Jackals Independent 6 2 3.08 12 10 0 61.1 58 26 18 45Michael Suk Randolph RHP Sussex County Miners Independent 7 6 4.82 21 11 0 84.0 98 51 27 63Mike Wallace Madison RHP Bristol Pirates Pittsburgh (R) 4 3 2.45 13 5 0 47.2 28 16 3 12 35

DOWN ON THE FARM

drafted him out of Seton Hall Universityin 2014. He hoped to go to Daytona, theReds’ high-A affiliate. But his forearmtightened up during the last week of thespring, and he wound up staying in ex-tended spring training in Arizona to gethealthy again.

After three weeks, Krauss returnedto Dayton, Ohio, where he’d been theprevious season. His forearm “acted upagain,” leading to a stint on the 10-daydisabled list, and another three weeksout of the rotation.

“When I came back, I kind of lost mymechanics a little bit,” Krauss said viacellphone from Birmingham last week.“I came back into this pressurized situa-tion of having to do good, and I wasn’t ina good state of mind.”

Krauss moved again, this time up toDaytona, but “I still couldn’t find my-self” and the Reds released him. But “itwas a positive release,” according toKrauss, a chance for him to regroup and

try to recapture his fastball, which wasclocked as high as 96 miles an hour.

“Everybody was on him so much, get-ting him back to where he was going twoyears ago with me in Billings,” said Day-ton pitching coach Derrin Ebert, whoalso worked with Krauss in his first mi-nor-league season.

“We saw that really live arm, and it

was in his head, ‘I’ve got to get backthere. I’ve got to get back there.’ I’mhappy he’s got another opportunity to dothat with another organization.”

White Sox assistant general managerBuddy Bell called Krauss about 15 min-utes after he got released, while he wasstill driving back to his apartment inDayton. He went back to Randolph for aday, then flew out to Arizona.

But Krauss still couldn’t get out of hisown head. He chose to stay in the Arizo-na League, “no pressure games, to findmyself.” He was one of the oldest play-ers on the roster, alongside mostly roo-kies who asked him for “advice on howto pitch and how to deal with things.”

AZL White Sox pitching coach FelipeLira was thrilled to work with Krauss, a6-foot-5, 235-pound reliever. Lira didn’ttry to make mechanical changes, in-stead just listening to Krauss’ experi-ences.

“He told me, when we threw a bull-pen, ‘Wow, I haven’t felt that good in along time,’ ” said Lira, a right-handedpitcher who spent seven years in themajors. “I was happy about that, be-cause he has great talent. … He wentthrough a stressful month, because he

didn’t throw a strike at all. That sur-prised me, somebody with that talent,because he’s a young kid who throwshard.”

Lira encouraged Krauss to go back tohis changeup, tinkering with “one thing,and another thing, and you make a bigchange.” After 4.2 innings in four ap-pearances in Arizona, Krauss got reas-signed to Birmingham on Aug. 17. Hepitched a scoreless inning that night andsaid his role is “just come in and getouts.”

Krauss already has been invited tothe White Sox’s instructional league inArizona in mid-September, a couple ofweeks after Birmingham’s season ends.He hopes to return to the closer rolenext season, focusing on improving hisconsistency.

“For me, what fixed it was going backto Arizona and not having any pressure:being able to just let the ball go, not carewhere it went, not care what happened,”Krauss said. “If I walked three guys in arow, it didn’t matter. It’s funny, becausewhen you don’t have that pressure, youdo better.”

Staff Writer Jane Havsy: 973-428-6682; jhavsy@gannettnj.com

KraussContinued from Page 4B

NICK FALZERANO/DAYTON DRAGONSConor Krauss is shown pitching for CincinnatiReds A-ball affiliate Dayton.

which is nice -- shooting, defense, slash-ing. None of them is the same guy. Itgives us a chance to go in different direc-tions.”

Willard is enthused about the group’sfocus coming off a 25-win season and BigEast Tournament title. With four startersback, the Hall projects as the third orfourth team in the league’s preseasonrankings.

“What I like about this group most ofall is that they’re all very motivated,” hesaid.

That might seem like coach-speak,but last preseason Willard expresseddisappointment in the development ofcenter Angel Delgado, who didn’t roundinto shape until well into the schedule.

“Angel had a very good summer -- amuch better summer than he had lastyear,” Willard said. “He’s gotten in goodshape, trimmed down a little bit.”

New role for Anderson

It was a gallant effort, trying to bal-ance law school and Division I basket-ball. This year Braeden Anderson will fo-cus strictly on his studies.

“Braeden and I sat down and realizedthat it was going to be very hard for himto do both,” Willard said. “But he’s veryvaluable to us -- he’s a great teammate,and so I’ll make him kind of a graduatecoach. So he’ll be in law school but still bearound.”

After transferring from Fresno State,the 6-foot-9 center played in 19 games off

the bench while carrying the full aca-demic load of a first-year law student atSeton Hall Law.

“He helped us last year,” Willard said.“Sometimes numbers don’t always showhow somebody helps you.”

He was the only Division I men’s bas-ketball player in recent memory to at-tempt such a juggling act.

“This works out great for everybody-- we still have him, and he’s a greatlocker-room guy, but my big thing forhim is to be successful in life,” Willardsaid. “I didn’t want him to burn bothends of the candle. It wasn’t fair tohim.”

Staff Writer Jerry Carino:jcarino@gannettnj.com.

PiratesContinued from Page 4B

USA TODAY SPORTSBraeden Anderson (center, arm raised) helped Seton Hall to a banner season last winter.

sports

OLD WESTBURY – Wisdom had verylittle to do with Mark Brown capturing athird Met Open championship a merethree weeks before his 50th birthday.

It was simply the result of really im-pressive golf.

The longtime Tam O’Shanter headprofessional outplayed a prodigy, clos-ing with a 68 Wednesday at Glen OaksClub to finish with a 4-under total of 206.Brown came in four shots ahead ofSleepy Hollow amateur Cameron Young,whose final-round charge lost steamwith a pair of late bogeys.

It was practically a walk in the park.“There’s not one shot this week I want

to take back,” said Brown, who collected$27,500. “It was fun. There wasn’t awhole lot of stress for three days outthere.”

Young was playing very well ahead ofthe wire-to-wire leader and was able toapply some momentary pressure.

The sophomore at Wake Forest was 4-under on the day and within a shot withsix holes to play. The gap was two strokeswhen he suffered bogeys on the 16th and17th holes.

Despite three bogeys on the back side,he closed with a 67.

“I was doing the same things I’ve beendoing,” Young said. “It seemed like ev-erything’s been coming together so itwas nice to have it happen in the finalround. I at least had a chance comingdown the stretch, and that’s all you canask for is to be within a couple of shotswith nine holes to play.

“I hit a 9-iron into the 16th, unfortu-nately. I tried to hit a low one and it squirt-ed right on me off the upslope. It was un-

fortunate that I got all the way to thebottom of that bunker. It would havebeen easy on the upslope. Then on the17th I had a little bit of a pull. It landedon the fringe and trickled down into thewater.”

Mike Miller also made a run.The 24-year-old Mackenzie Tour

player from Brewster came in off atop-10 finish in Ottawa and opened witha 77. He got back into contention with apair of 68s to finish tied for third withPeter Ball of Old Oaks.

“I got off to a good start, birdied thefirst couple of holes and had really goodchances on the first seven,” Miller said.“And then I had a bad swing on No. 9,which slowed me down. I got it goingagain and was 4-under on the daythrough 16. If you hit to the middle ofthe green or the right side, the worstyou’re going to make is 4. I wanted thatsecond-place check and went flag-hunt-ing. I pulled the ball just a little, caughtthe bank and went into the water, butI’m really satisfied with the week.

“I shot a 77 to start and still had, not agood chance to win, but a chance to win.Two rounds in the 60s around here ispretty good. I might have been a littleshot after playing in Canada and flyingin, but all in all it was so cool to behome.”

GOLF

Brown cruises in Met OpenMIKE DOUGHERTYMDOUGHER@LOHUD.COM

MIKE DOUGHERTY/THE JOURNAL NEWSMet Open champion Mark Brown waits to teeoff at the 17th hole at Glen Oaks Club onWednesday.

narik Award. He played in only onegame last season and received a med-ical redshirt.

He has been in a green jerseythroughout spring practice and train-ing camp, signifying that he is limitedas he continues to rehab from his kneeinjury.

Pinnix-Odrick, the half-brother ofJacksonville Jaguars standout JaredOdrick, had two forced fumbles andthree tackles for loss in 2015.

Muller, a Big Ten honorable mentionselection last season, has a team-best 37consecutive starts and was a recipientof the “R” Man Courage Award last sea-son. This will be his fourth consecutiveseason as starting right guard for theScarlet Knights.

Nelson is a national nominee for theAmerican Football Community Associ-ation Good Works Team, which recog-nizes student-athletes across collegefootball who have made a difference intheir communities. The modest Nelsonwas asked last week about his charita-ble work but was reluctant to discuss itat length.

Muller and Nelson are two of fourreturning starters on the offensive line,along with left guard Dorian Miller andright tackle J.J. Denman, who seems tobe making progress in his quest to holdoff redshirt sophomore Zack Heemanfor the starting position.

Hamilton and Pinnix-Odrick weretwo of the three players who spoke atthe dedication Sunday of Rutgers’ newstrength and conditioning center. Theother was senior wide receiver AndrePatton.

Rutgers’ 2015 captains all were sen-iors, too. Hamilton was joined by fellowDon Bosco Prep alum Leonte Carroo,linebacker Quentin Gause and runningback Paul James. Carroo was a second-round draft pick of the Miami Dol-phins.

MARK R. SULLIVAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERRutgers star Darius Hamilton is the firstthree-time captain in program history.

HamiltonContinued from Page 4B