By Matt Sugam

PISCATAWAY – Even though he’s back at practice for this week for the first time in the regular season, head coach Kyle Flood hasn’t given P.J. James (ankle) the green light for the Arkansas game Saturday.

“Not yet,” Flood said when asked if he was game ready. “P.J.’s working out with us right now. I’m optimistic but I’m not sure if he’s game ready yet. We’ll have to decide that as the time goes on.”

After watching James during today’s practice, Flood simply felt he wasn’t in game shape quite yet.

“I don’t have any reservations with P.J. other than him being full speed. I don’t know that he’s there yet after seeing him today.”

With Savon Huggins (lower body) sitting out of practice and his return this week questionable, the pecking order at running back remains a mystery for now.

“We’re discussing that right now because we don’t know if P.J. is going to be ready to go, so it’s going to be Jawan [Jamsion] for now and some combination of P.J. and Ben [Martin] would be after that today, but that could change before practice tomorrow because that’s some of the discussions as we go.”

One of those discussions is the status of Huggins. Right now, it appears the sophomore will miss his second straight game.

“As of today he’s out,” Flood said. “Hopefully by the end of the week we get him back, but when a guy doesn’t practice and see the live fire action it’s hard to foresee a situation where you get him in there.”

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