PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Purdue had conceded four goals in nine matches this season. Rutgers scored the fifth at 35:59, 98 seconds after Olivia Russomanno came off the bench.
It was the only shot Rutgers took in the first half.
The Scarlet Knights lost 2-1 to the Boilermakers on Sunday afternoon at Yurcak Field in their Big Ten home opener, with Megan Santa Cruz converting a penalty at 62:54 and Irene Campo finishing at 75:40 for the winner. Russomanno’s goal, assisted by Emma Johns and Patricia Tsokos,
stood for 27 minutes of the second half.
Wolf did not have to touch another Rutgers shot for the remaining 44 minutes.
The shape of the season has not moved. Rutgers has been shut out three times, has scored exactly once three times, and has produced more than one goal only against Providence and Princeton. Six of the eight matches have finished level or by a single goal. Sunday was the worst version of that, because this is the first one Rutgers led.
Purdue arrived at 7-1-1 and unbeaten in non-conference play, a record that needs its schedule attached. The Boilermakers opened against Evansville, Purdue Fort Wayne, Chicago State, Eastern Illinois, Ball State, Southern Indiana and Middle Tennessee, won six of the seven and scored 34 goals doing it. Then conference play started and the arithmetic changed, with a 2-1 loss at No. 16 UCLA on Sept. 10 and a 2-0 win at USC three days later. Counting Sunday, that is five Big Ten goals in three matches, one of them from the penalty spot.
Richard Moodie is in his third season and only the third head coach the program has had since it began play in 1998. He took over a team that had not won a Big Ten match since 2022 and that went 6-10-3 and 3-7-1 in the league last year. Its two decorated returners, second-team All-Big Ten midfielder Irene Campo and Megan Santa Cruz, a Washington State transfer who made the Pac-12 All-Freshman team in 2023, scored both goals Sunday.
The more revealing Purdue number is who did not score. Jaiden Anderson came in with eight goals and Rosa Maalouf with six, and on Sunday the two of them managed one blocked shot in 165 minutes on the field. Purdue won this with a penalty and with a midfielder it had taken off in the 36th minute and sent back out at halftime.
Lineup
GK: Olivia Bodmer
D: Julia Joseph, Jayme Malanda, Morgan Hippeli, Lindsey Hailey, Patricia Tsokos
M: Tommi Valente
F: Lilia Calvert, Reilly McGlinn, Ashley Baran, Marian Dunne
Subs: Bea Tinoco, Gabriela Gil, Olivia Russomanno, Lily Ann Phillips, Amanda Thornton, Riley Morris, Emma Johns, Dina Bojkovic
Four Scarlet Knights played all 90 minutes. Twenty-five substitutions happened around them.
The pattern O’Neill has run all month arrived in a different order. One change at 25:32, Thornton for Ashley Baran. A wave of four at 34:21, with Gabriela Gil for Calvert, Russomanno for McGlinn, Lily Ann Phillips for Jayme Malanda and Johns for Marian Dunne. Riley Morris for Tommi Valente at 42:44. Six changes before the break, where the first four matches of the season brought nine apiece and Princeton brought ten. Then the reset, all six starters restored in one block at 45:00, the opening eleven taking the field again for the second half.
Ninety-eight seconds after that wave of four, two of the four combined for the only goal Rutgers scored.
The churn that used to arrive before halftime arrived after it instead. Thirteen more changes came in the second half, at 63:13, 71:34, 75:12, 75:40, 78:13 and 83:08, and by the end Rutgers had used eight substitutes and 19 players. Bea Tinoco played 11 minutes in two shifts, Dina Bojkovic four, Morris two. Gil, a team captain, played 23 minutes across two spells and was not on the field at the finish.
The Only Shot of the First Half Goes In
Purdue outshot Rutgers 4-1 in the opening 45 and won three corners to none. Rutgers took one shot and scored it. Olivia Bodmer made one save. Krystina Wolf made none. Rutgers committed seven fouls to Purdue’s nine, and the only card of the half went to a Rutgers substitute in the 43rd minute.
The opening half hour was fouls, throw-ins and very little else. Tsokos gave one away at 0:59, Hippeli at 1:30 and Tsokos again at 2:40, three Rutgers fouls inside the first 160 seconds. Gabriela Angulo had a shot blocked at 2:18 and another at 20:43. Rutgers was offside at 5:29. Purdue won corners at 14:17, 14:58 and 20:03 and got nothing from any of them.
Through 25 minutes Rutgers had not attempted a shot.
O’Neill made his first change at 25:32, Thornton on for Baran, and the next ten minutes looked like the ten before them. Then the benches emptied and the match produced something. Rutgers made four changes at once at 34:21 and Purdue answered with two of its own, Zoe Miles for McKenzie Carle and Cassie Bibby for Emilia Deppe. At 35:59, Emma Johns and Patricia Tsokos worked the ball to Olivia Russomanno, who finished into the bottom left corner off her right foot.
It was Rutgers’ first shot of the match and it went in.
Wolf came in with seven wins and six clean sheets and had not been asked to make a save when she picked the ball out of her net. Moodie responded inside the same minute, Charlotte McMurtrie on for Campo and Montgomery Draham on for Maalouf, and Purdue spent the next four minutes handing the ball back. Miles fouled at 36:41, McMurtrie at 38:59 and Anderson at 39:55. Four fouls, four minutes, no shots.
Rutgers closed the half with a substitution and a caution. Morris came on at 42:44, and eight seconds later Thornton was booked for unsporting conduct, and the free kick that followed produced the only sustained pressure of the half. Miles forced Bodmer into a save at 43:59, bottom left, and Draham put the next attempt off target at 44:12.
Rutgers went to the break with the lead, one shot and no corners.
Two Handballs in 75 Seconds and Nine Shots That Go Nowhere
Rutgers put its second and final shot on target 36 seconds into the second half. McGlinn struck it at 45:36, bottom right, and Wolf saved it. Over the remaining 44 minutes Rutgers attempted eight more and not one of them reached her.
Two were blocked. Six went off target.
None of it was for lack of trying. Rutgers won corners at 46:47, 49:27 and 59:26, had Calvert blocked at 49:17, and watched Lindsey Hailey, a center back, put attempts wide at 49:52 and 59:56. Purdue’s hour was similarly thin, with Santa Cruz off target at 52:07, Lauren Adam forcing Bodmer into a save at 56:02 from the bottom right and Santa Cruz blocked at 61:30.
Then the match turned on two calls 75 seconds apart. Rutgers was penalized for handball at 61:39 and gave up a free kick. At 62:54 it was called again, this time on Tsokos and this time inside the area. Santa Cruz took the penalty and put it bottom right.
The player who had assisted the Rutgers goal conceded the penalty that erased it.
O’Neill went back to the bench 19 seconds later, Gil for Valente and Russomanno for Baran, which put the goalscorer back on the field. Gil shot off target at 63:37 and Calvert was blocked at 64:58, and then Purdue took the ball and kept it for ten minutes. Angulo had attempts blocked at 66:11 and 67:34 and was booked at 69:30. Purdue won corners at 66:17, 66:56, 73:19 and 73:31. Miles forced Bodmer into saves at 68:26 and 73:01, both to the top left. McGlinn shot off target at 71:04. Rutgers made four more changes at 71:34 and three more at 75:12.
Twenty-eight seconds after the second batch, Irene Campo finished with her left foot into the bottom right corner.
Purdue had been at Yurcak Field for 76 minutes and led for the first time.
What followed was 14 minutes of pushing that never connected. Calvert put one off target at 78:07. Thornton came on for Dunne at 78:13 and Rutgers was flagged offside at 78:48. There were corners at 82:08 and 87:38 and a Purdue bench managing the clock, with Miles booked at 84:23 and withdrawn five seconds later.
The last attempt of the match came at 88:00 from Morgan Hippeli, a center back who had played every minute of it, and it went wide. Purdue was offside at 89:30 and that was the afternoon.
Nine second-half shots, and Krystina Wolf never had to move.
The result drops Rutgers to 2-3-3 overall and 1-2-0 in the Big Ten, a second consecutive loss and the first at Yurcak this season. Mike O’Neill’s side has not won since Amanda Thornton’s 50th-minute goal at Oregon on Sept. 10 in the conference opener, and it has now scored 11 goals in eight matches and conceded 12.
UCLA comes to Yurcak on Thursday at 8 p.m. for the Blackout on BTN, the same UCLA that beat Purdue 2-1 in Los Angeles on Sept. 10 while ranked No. 16. Wisconsin follows on Sunday at 1 p.m., also at Yurcak, and then Rutgers travels to Iowa on Oct. 4. Three matches in eleven days, two of them at home, against a conference that has not yet shown Rutgers anything it cannot stay with.
Staying with it is not the problem.
Purdue has conceded five goals all season. Rutgers scored one of them in the 36th minute, from a player who had been on the field for 98 seconds, and then had 54 minutes to find a sixth and never made the goalkeeper move.
