NJIT men's lacrosse plays first time opponent No. 18 Georgetown on Saturday for a 3pm game at Cooper Field in Washington DC.
The Highlanders are coming off their first win of the season against Hampton last weekend, registering their first home win in program history.
The Hoyas take a break from conference play, after winning a big game over BIG EAST opponent No. 13 Villanova last week.
A LOOK AT THE HOYAS
Georgetown is 8-4 on the year and 2-2 in the BIG EAST Conference. They Hoyas already posted one more win than they did in conference play last year with their 13-11 win over Villanova.
The Hoyas have one conference game remaining against St. John's after they play the Highlanders.
As a team Georgetown ranks tied for 12
th in the nation for scoring defense, allowing only 8.58 goals on average per game.
Four Hoyas have 20 points or more on the year, starting with Daniel Bucaro who scored five goals and added an assist against Villanova. Senior Bucaro leads the team in goals with 34, assists with 21 and points with 55. Bucaro also ranks 12
th in the nation in goals per game (2.83) and 18
th in points per game (4.58).
Jake Carraway is second on the team in goals with 32 and also has 14 assists for 46 points while Craig Berge has 14 goals and is second on the team in assists with 17 for 31 points.
Lucas Wittenburg rounds out the four with 15 goals and 11 assists for 26 points.
Georgetown's face-off man is Peter Taliaferri, who leads the team in ground balls with 45 and is 80-for-203 from the circle with a .483 percentage. Greg Galligan is the team leader in caused turnovers with 18, and Gibson Smith also have double digit caused turnovers with 15 and 13 respectively.
In goal for the Hoyas is Nick Marrocco who has started all 12 games, tallying 111 total saves and a .534 save percentage that ranks him 18
th in the nation.
A LOOK AT THE HIGHLANDERS
NJIT is coming off their third program win, a 15-8 victory over Hampton last weekend.
Nine different Highlanders scored in the win, including career nights from
Cole Robillard (4g, 1a),
Ryan Kaden (2g, 3a) and
Collin Fogerty (1g, 2a).
Junior
Aaron Forster leads the team in all offensive categories with 29 goals and 12 assists for 41 points. Forster has a 27 game point scoring streak going on since 2017. With two games remaining in the season, Forster is six goals away from breaking his goals in a season record, two assists away from breaking his assists in a season record, and three points away from breaking his points in a season record.
Cole Robillard ranks second in the team in points, on 20 goals and five assists for 25 points. His 20 goals ranks second all-time for goals in a season at NJIT. Robillard's four goals at Hampton was the first time he scored more than three goals in a game, and is the third Highlander ever to score four or more goals in a game.
Midfielder
Ryan Darrow is third on the team in points, on 12 goals and six assists for 18 points. The junior moved up to second all-time in the NJIT record books in points with 43 and third all-time in career goals with 30.
Ryan Kaden has seven goals and eight assists on the year, and ranks fifth in NJIT career points with 34.
NJIT has 12 other goal scorers, 10 that are either freshman or sophomores.
On defense John Tahon,
Luke Binder and
Matthew Valdez accumulate almost half of the Highlanders caused turnovers.
Tachon leads the team in both ground balls and caused turnovers with 79 and 18, and recently broke the NJIT records in career ground balls (150) and ground balls in a season and tied his career and program-high 18 caused turnovers in a season with two games remaining. Tachon ranks 21
st in the nation in ground balls per game and 45
th in caused turnovers per game.
Binder holds 11 caused turnovers and has 15 ground balls.
Graduate student Valdez, who has played the most games as a Highlander at 55, ranks second in the team in both ground balls (30) and caused turnovers (14) and just came off a career-game against Hampton, grabbing five ground balls.
Goalie
Nick Marzullo has started in all 14 games for the Highlanders, and notched his third career win against Hampton. The senior has 138 saves and ranks 27
th in the nation in saves per game with 9.86.
