PISCATAWAY, NJ—Rutgers scored a convincing men's lacrosse win over visiting NJIT Friday night, toppling the Highlanders 21-2 in a snowy High Point Solutions Stadium.
Rutgers (4-6) is not a nationally-ranked team, but the Scarlet Knights can compete with ranked teams, as evidenced by their 12-11 loss to #10/#13 Princeton earlier this week in the game that preceded NJIT's visit.
NJIT (0-6) is a first-year varsity program that took a step back defensively Friday from the encouraging recent results the Highlanders have had in their inaugural season.
After giving up 45 goals in their first three games, with a high of 18 in Game One at Stony Brook, the Highlanders allowed 9 against UMass Lowell and then cut that to a season-low 6 against Monmouth earlier this week before taking on Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights had 12 goals by halftime against NJIT Friday.
Rutgers scored the only four goals of the first quarter, but NJIT's
John Roach got his team on the scoreboard, making it 4-1 just 46 seconds into the second quarter.
The home team answered with three goals before
Joe Lomeli struck at the seven-minute mark of the second quarter to set the game score at 7-2.
Unfortunately for the Highlanders, they were done scoring for the day and Rutgers pumped in five more goals before halftime and then added five more unanswered tallies in the third quarter and then a 4-0 fourth quarter for the 21-2 victory.
The shots differential was not as great as what might be expected by the final score, as Rutgers had 37 shots to 23 for NJIT. In fact, the Highlanders had a slight edge (15-13) in the second half after being outgunned 24-8 in the opening half.
Each team used two goalkeepers, with starter Kris Alleyne going 45 minutes for the winners and Jake Andersen coming on for the last 15 minutes. Each RU goalkeeper made four saves and Alleyne let through both NJIT goals.
Nick Marzullo started and allowed 12 goals with five saves in playing the first half. He came off the field for the first time this season and backup
Joshua Solomon played the second half, allowing nine goals while recording no saves.
All but one of the 23 goals in the game were scored with the teams at even strength, with the only exception being a man-up tally by Ryan Hollingsworth of Rutgers with 8:52 left in the second quarter that made the score 8-2.
The goal for NJIT's Roach was his third of the season, raising his points total to 9 (3 goals, team-leading 6 assists), which ties him for the team points lead with Lomeli, who has all his points on a team-best 9 goals.
Nine different Scarlet Knights scored goals and eight were credited with assists. Brian Goss paced Rutgers with five goals on the day, while Scott Bieda and Jules Heningburg each added four goals. Bieda was the RU assists leader (3) and Heningburg collected two assists.
NJIT, which had played four of its first five games at home, now is in a stretch of five-of-six on the road, beginning with the game at Rutgers. Next up, the Highlanders will take their longest road trip of the season, taking on Richmond in Virginia on Monday at 4 pm.
Richmond, which has a game in Florida at Jacksonville on Saturday, is 4-3. Two of the Spiders losses have come against ranked teams. They lost at home to Number 17 Marquette, 11-10 in overtime in late February and they fell to Number 2 North Carolina, 16-11, on March 14.
