Rutgers Men's Soccer Falls at Villanova 2-0
Oct 08 | Men's Soccer
VILLANOVA, Pa. – The Rutgers men’s soccer team (4-4-3, 1-3-2 BIG EAST) suffered a tough conference loss at Red Division rival Villanova (5-5-2, 2-2-2 BIG EAST) on Wednesday afternoon. The Wildcats scored a pair of goals in the first half en route to the 2-0 victory.
“It’s a recurring theme,” said head coach Bob Reasso. “We have more possession, more shots and more corners but we’re just inexperienced. We don’t seem to play with the necessary urgency that we need to, until we’re down. Unfortunately today, we had all of the ball in the first half and they got behind us twice and we gave up two goals and now we’re chasing the game.
“In the second half we played with a lot of intensity, a lot of passion and we competed but it just seems like we’re too inexperienced to bring that in the beginning of games. It’s a tough result. Give Villanova credit, they made the best of their chances and they won the ball game. It all comes down to growing up, we have to learn from these things but it gets to the point where you start running out of games and we haven’t learned enough yet.”
The Scarlet Knights have had a tough time getting out to a quick start this season with just one of their 12 goals coming in the first half of their games. This trend proved costly against the Wildcats as Rutgers held an 11-6 edge in shots in the first half. For the game, RU outshot Villanova 19-14 and led 7-3 in the corner kick department.
VU scored both of its goals in the first half, taking a 1-0 lead in the 20th minute on a goal from Michael Seamon. The Wildcats then increased their advantage with another tally 21 minutes later on a score from Anthony Yeboah.
There was a great deal of physical play during the contest with a combined 36 fouls – 24 of which were called on Villanova. The slant in fouls yielded a number of set piece opportunities for the Scarlet Knights; however, it also prevented RU from creating a rhythm in its attack.
“They had twice as many fouls as we had,” said Reasso. “With all those set pieces we should have punished them. We probably had 15 set pieces in the attacking third and we never made any of them count. That’s something we need to do a better job of.”
Next up, Rutgers will travel to Syracuse for the second of its five-match road slate. RU can look to make up ground in the Red Division by earning points against the Orange and Cincinnati which it will face on Oct. 18.
“We continue to drop points in the BIG EAST and that’s not a good thing,” said Reasso. “We have to go back to work tomorrow, regroup and get ready for a very tough game against Syracuse on Saturday.”
The Scarlet Knights will take on the Orange at 7:00 p.m. at the Lampe Athletic Complex.
