PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers had conceded a goal in every match it played this season, six games and five different results, the most recent of them Friday’s 3-1 win over No. 11 UCLA. On Tuesday, closing a five-game homestand against the best record to visit Yurcak Field all year, the Scarlet Knights finally kept a clean sheet. They beat No. 16 Princeton 2-0 in front of 508, handing the Tigers, 4-0-1 coming in, their first loss of the season.
Both goals came in the first half, 29 minutes apart, from
a starting forward who would leave the match and come back twice and a substitute who entered for a center back. Abubakar Mayanja scored in the 11th minute and was subbed off in the 30th. William Pierce, on since the 30th for Hector Criado, doubled the lead in the 40th and was himself pulled just after the hour. Both finishes went into the same corner of Andrew Samuels’ net.
Rutgers arrived at 2-3-1 off the best result of its season, the upset of 11th-ranked UCLA that had brought its goal total to eight in six matches: four of them scored in a single night against Sacred Heart, three against the Bruins, one in between. The goals-against column had not moved. Rutgers had allowed a goal in each of its first six games, and Rafael Ponce de Leon carried 18 saves on the year into Tuesday’s match without a shutout to show for any of them.
Princeton was unbeaten and ranked 16th nationally entering the match, by record the most accomplished team to visit Rutgers this homestand. None of that showed for the first 45 minutes. The Tigers managed a single shot in the opening half, off their single corner of the opening half, and went into the locker room down two goals to a team they were favored to beat.
Lineup
GK: Rafael Ponce de Leon
D: Devon Stopek, Nick Collins, Hector Criado, Erick Ruiz, Braxton Montgomery
M: Pius Ssebulime, Zach Mastrodimos, Francesco Di Ponzio
F: Thomas Angelone, Abubakar Mayanja
Subs: Simon Gorczowski, William Pierce, Joshua Jerome, Amer Lukovic, Jeffrey Bryjak, Dylan Carlson, Noah Hannawald, Jaeden Gordon
Rutgers made four changes at once in the 30th minute, still up only 1-0 with Gorczowski on for Angelone, Pierce on for Criado, Jerome on for Di Ponzio, Bryjak on for Mayanja. Ten minutes later, one of the four scored, Pierce, beat Samuels off a Ruiz service with Ssebulime credited on the build.
The reshuffling didn’t stop there. Three Rutgers starters left the match and came back before the final whistle, Angelone, Di Ponzio and Mayanja each played two separate stretches, and Jerome did the same from the bench, entering in the 30th minute, coming off at halftime, and returning in the 63rd. It was the second match in three days in which Rutgers brought a substituted player back into the game and Tuesday, it happened four times over. By the 63rd minute, three of the four players directly responsible for Rutgers’ goals as Mayanja, Pierce and Ruiz were off the field for good, joined by Ssebulime and Montgomery before the 80th.
Princeton countered with its own churn with three substitutions by the 28th minute, four more at halftime, three more in the 74th. Roka Tsunehara and Julien Lacher led the line, Kristian Kelley and Tyler Vilet worked the midfield, and Dash Papez and Lucas Ferreira anchored a back line that spent the first half defending and the second half chasing a goal it never got.
Two Goals Before the Reshuffle
Rutgers won a corner 70 seconds into the match and another 43 seconds after that, with a blocked Mayanja attempt in between, and the shape of the half was set inside two minutes. Princeton spent the opening quarter-hour retreating into restarts, seven throw-ins in the first nine minutes, and did not put a meaningful touch into the Rutgers box until the 35th.
Then Mayanja got a goal.
It came in the 11th as Braxton Montgomery moved it forward, Francesco Di Ponzio touched it on, and Mayanja finished left-footed into the bottom left corner. The match then went through a bit of a tactical back and forth. Zach Mastrodimos was awarded two free kicks inside that span, Hector Criado and Erick Ruiz one apiece, and Rutgers kept the ball in the Tigers’ half. Mayanja fired over in the 26th, Di Ponzio missed the target in the 29th, and Princeton went to its bench for three changes in the 28th minute, still trailing by one and still without a shot.
The first arrived in the 36th and was also its last of the half. Tsunehara won Princeton’s only first-half corner in the 35th and forced Ponce de Leon into a low save to his left a minute later. Two minutes after that, Rutgers put the ball in the Princeton net and did not get to keep it, flagged offside in the 38th. The official play-by-play logs the offside call and nothing else, however my own eyes did not deceive me. Jim McElderry argued the decision at length, and his frustration with it carried through the rest of the match, justified given many of the poor calls by the referred. No caution was shown to the Rutgers bench though.
Pierce settled the half at 39:59
He showed off a right-footed finish into the bottom left corner, the same corner Mayanja had found 29 minutes earlier. Joshua Jerome nearly made it three in the 42nd, forcing the only save Samuels had to make before the break, and Rutgers won its fourth corner a few seconds later. Princeton went to halftime having taken one shot.
Princeton Controls the Ball, Not the Scoreboard
Princeton made four changes at the interval with Noah Hammerschmidt, Cyrus Klinenberg, Giacomo Gabrielli and Benjamin Manfroy all on. The reshaped Tigers took the match over territorially without ever taking it over anywhere that counted. Nick Collins put Rutgers’ first attempt of the half off target in the 48th and Mastrodimos had one blocked in the 55th. Tsunehara had Princeton’s first blocked in the 59th. Then Princeton settled in and Rutgers stopped coming forward.
Between the 66th and the 72nd minute the Tigers won four corners, at 65:46, 68:01, 70:44 and 71:29, and did not manage a shot from any of them, not surprising at all. Pius Ssebulime conceded three fouls across that stretch and the one before it. Rutgers had already pulled Pierce, Mayanja and Ruiz in the 63rd, and by the 79th Ssebulime and Montgomery were gone too, replaced by Dylan Carlson and a returning Thomas Angelone.
Julien Lacher, back on in the 74th after starting the match, produced the best two looks Princeton generated all night. Ponce de Leon saved the first low to his right in the 78th and the second low to his left 42 seconds after that. Lacher had a third blocked in the 82nd and Manfroy had one blocked six seconds later.
The most dangerous Tiger on the field, though, was the one who spent 82 minutes off it.
Ian Nunez entered in the 82nd, took two shots in eight minutes, and put both on frame, and they were saved top left in the 84th and saved bottom center at 89:03, the last touch of consequence in the match. It was probably a blessing that Princeton did not know how to appropriately use him tonight.
Rutgers’ only shot on target of the second half belonged to Amer Lukovic, saved by Samuels in the 84th, nine seconds after Nunez’s first. Lukovic had picked up the match’s only card five minutes before that, a yellow for unsporting behavior in the 80th, which seemed . Rutgers won one corner after halftime, in the 84th, and took four shots to Princeton’s seven. The Tigers finished with 14 fouls to Rutgers’ 10, six second-half corners to one, and the same number of goals they had at kickoff.
Rutgers moves to 3-3-1 and takes their first shutout of the season on the road, first to Ohio State on Sept. 18 and then to defending national champion Washington on Sept. 25. Ponce de Leon is now at 23 saves against six goals allowed through seven matches, five of those saves, and none of the goals, coming Tuesday, against three different Princeton shooters.
For the second time in, Rutgers’ scoring came from somewhere other than where it was drawn up with a forward who scored, left and came back twice, and a substitute who entered for a defender and beat a ranked opponent’s goalkeeper anyway. Rutgers had a third goal chalked off for offside in the 38th and won by two without it. Princeton controlled the final 45 minutes and had nothing to show for it.
Rutgers had needed only the first 40.
