No. 17 Rutgers took five shots at No. 4 Princeton on Friday and none of them came after the 18:57 mark. It took 13 against No. 10 UCONN on Sunday, scored three times, led twice and lost 3-1 in a shootout. Rutgers scored more goals in one afternoon than it had in its previous three games combined and got the same thing out of the weekend that it got out of Friday, which was nothing. The Scarlet Knights are 2-4, all four losses to ranked teams, and they are finished with ranked teams for a while.
Forty-One Minutes Without a Shot
Rutgers
had failed to take a first-quarter shot in two of its first four games. At Princeton it took four in the opening quarter and earned four penalty corners alongside them, and then it stopped.
Frederique Vernooij inserted at 2:48 and again at 2:57, and Olivia Caponiti saved Anna Cogdell at 3:09. Princeton got its first corner at 4:14 through Reese Milone. Emily Nicholls saved Ottilie Sykes at 4:22 and Molly Nye at 5:30, and at 9:43 Nye got in behind the Rutgers line and finished a Clem Houlden cross on the touch.
Rutgers answered with 37 seconds of genuine pressure. Laura Loycke shot at 12:00 and Caponiti saved it, Loycke inserted at 12:01 and Caponiti saved Cogdell at 12:02, Loycke inserted again at 12:27 and Cogdell’s shot at 12:37 was blocked.
That was effectively the game.
Vernooij took Rutgers’ last shot attempt at 18:57 and Caponiti saved that one too. Forty-one minutes and three seconds remained. Princeton outshot Rutgers 9-0 after halftime. The Tigers took four corners in the third quarter, two from Milone and two from Pru Lindsey, and Nicholls saved Tabby Vaughan at 32:06, Caitlin Thompson at 32:36 and 40:20 and Nye at 44:51. Lindsey scored at 56:43, a give-and-go finished at the far post with Nicholls out in pursuit, and Rutgers pulled her at 57:57. Vernooij earned a corner at 59:55 and the horn caught Nye shooting at an empty net that the defense covered.
Nicholls made eight saves of her own. The ninth in the box score is credited to the team, on the last play, with no goalkeeper on the field.
Talia Schenck started her fifth straight game, at the program she transferred out of, and did not take a shot. Sophie Kuiper took a green card at 28:57 and it cost Rutgers nothing, because Rutgers was not attacking anyway.
Princeton is 2-1 and 20-5 dating to last season, has not allowed a goal in 195 minutes, and won at home in this series for the first time since 2019. The all-time meetings now sit 4-4 over the last eight.
Rutgers Led Twice and UConn Answered in Seconds
Laura Loycke came on at 4:24 on Sunday. She shot at 5:20 and Natalie Mckenna saved it, took a corner at 5:43 and scored at 6:34. Two minutes and ten seconds after walking on, for the second goal of her season and the opening goal of the ‘Field Hockey Attacks Cancer’ game at the Bauer Complex.
Rutgers did not take a shot in the second quarter. UConn took eight and Nicholls saved seven of them. The one she did not get came 17 seconds after the second of two Milou Heuker inserts, at 19:01 and 19:15, and Charlotte Ritter put it away at 19:32.
Rutgers went back ahead 54 seconds into the third. Ella Gandy inserted at 30:54 and Lauren Iaccio scored at 30:56, Gandy and Eden Doucelin credited. Iaccio is a freshman back who had put four shots on goal this season and watched a goalkeeper stop all four. Two seconds from insert to finish.
UConn needed three minutes and 45 seconds to reply and two seconds to execute it. Olivia McKenna inserted at 34:39 and Lucy Zich scored at 34:41. Rutgers then produced the loudest stretch of the day and got nothing from it with three Loycke corners in eight seconds at 37:09, 37:10 and 37:17, Cogdell blocked twice, Julia Vinas Nieto saved.
Nothing.
Heuker inserted at 52:22 and Nicholls saved Marlijn Swaan two seconds later. Heuker inserted again at 52:48 and Emma Larit scored at 52:53 off a Lene Reiche assist. UConn led for the first time with 7:07 to play.
Cogdell equalized at 56:23, unassisted. The 15-minute overtime produced one Rutgers attempt, a Vernooij effort wide at 70:45, and nothing at all from UConn. Fien Hollander took a green card at 70:04 and Rutgers did not manufacture a corner out of the advantage.
The shootout went the other way from the last one.
UConn shot first and Abby Davidson missed. Cogdell missed. Reiche scored, Schenck missed, Ritter scored, Olivia Fraticelli scored, Olivia McKenna missed, Martha Goodridge missed, Zich scored to end it. Six days earlier Rutgers had converted four of four against Syracuse and Nicholls had been beaten once. On Sunday Rutgers converted one of four and Nicholls stopped two of five, which was not enough.
Twenty-Four Seconds
UConn scored three goals. The insert-to-goal times were 17 seconds, two seconds and five seconds. Twenty-four seconds of penalty corner execution decided the game, the weekend and Rutgers’ record.
UConn took 12 corners and scored on three. Heuker inserted eight of them, including the two that produced the first and third goals. Rutgers took six and scored on one, which was itself two seconds from insert to finish.
My column last week pointed out that Rutgers had taken 16 corners in two games against top-12 opposition and scored once. The number has not improved so much as changed hands. Across this weekend Rutgers took 11 corners and got one goal. Its opponents took 17 and got three. Princeton did not need any of its five, scoring both from open play, which is the part Rutgers should find least comforting that the two best teams it has played in a month beat it two different ways.
The Card Count Went Quiet
Rutgers took seven cards in its first four games. It took two this weekend, Kuiper’s green at Princeton and Vinas Nieto’s at 57:16 on Sunday, and neither one showed up in a scoreline. That is the first thing this season Rutgers has fixed without something else breaking in its place.
Rutgers travels to Albany on Friday at 1 p.m. and Colgate on Sunday at noon, the first back-to-back unranked opponents of the season and the first weekend of the year that arrives without a ranking attached to it. La Salle visits the Bauer Complex on Sept. 27, and Penn State opens Big Ten play there on Oct. 2.
Forty-one minutes without a shot on Friday. Three goals on Sunday. Nothing to show for either.
Albany asks which version turns up when the other team isn’t ranked.
Rutgers travels to Albany on Friday at 1 p.m. and Colgate on Sunday at noon, the first back-to-back unranked opponents of the season, and Laura Loycke goes into them with two goals in three games. La Salle visits the Bauer Complex on Sept. 27 and Penn State opens Big Ten play there on Oct. 2. Five of Rutgers’ first six opponents were ranked, and the four losses are all to those five.
Rutgers found out on Sunday that it can score three goals against a top-10 team and still lose the afternoon.
Friday asks the simpler question, against a team with no number in front of it, in a game it should win.
