Rutgers, St. Peter's Play to Scoreless Tie in Men's Soccer Action
Sep 07 | Men's Soccer
PISCATAWAY, N.J. – After 110 minutes of play, neither team was able to find the back of the net as the Rutgers men's soccer team (2-1-1) and St. Peter's College (0-2-1) played to a scoreless tie on Sunday afternoon at Yurcak Field.
The game, which was originally scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 6 at 7:00 p.m., was moved to Sunday as remnants of Hurricane Hanna brought heavy rains to the East Coast. The match also featured the return of former Scarlet Knight and two-time All American Guy Abrahamson, who is the head coach at St. Peter's College.
Rutgers was without two of its normal starters as freshman Sam Archer (Queens, N.Y.) and sophomore Stafford Chipungu (Randallstown, Md.) were held from the contest for breaching the team's code of conduct.
"I had to make two substitutions because I had to suspend two guys right before the game," said head coach Bob Reasso. "I thought that really disrupted us because we then had to change the face of our team right before the game. Unfortunately, that affected us and we kept putting some guys in until we found a group that really wanted to play. I thought the last 15-20 minutes of the first half, we took over the game over and for the last half and the two overtimes I thought we were the better team.
Make no doubts about it; St. Peter's is well coached," Reasso added. "Guy does a great job with them and I think they'll do really well in their conference, but on the whole I thought we were the better team."
The Scarlet Knights dominated much of the scoring opportunities from the midway point of the first half until the conclusion of the match as they outshot the Peacocks 17-10 and held a 9-5 advantage in corner kicks.
Senior goalkeeper Amir Haghshenas (Wyckoff, N.J.) played all 110 minutes in goal, making five saves in the tie. Freshmen Gaetano Panuccio (Mechanicsburg, Pa.), Ibrahim Kamara (North Brunswick, N.J.) and Bryant Knibbs (Pine Bush, N.Y.) combined for 10 of RU's 17 shots as the trio put seven of those opportunities on goal.
Both teams were locked in a very physical battle all afternoon which resulted in 31 fouls (Rutgers 20 – St. Peter's 11) and one yellow card being awarded. The physical play was magnified in the final minutes of the game when what appeared to be a foul in the penalty area was ruled otherwise.
"At the end of the day, it's the second time that ref has been here and it's the second time he's looked away at penalty kick," said Reasso. "You can ask anyone in the stands and I'm sure we'll see it on film that it was a penalty kick. Yannick's [Salmon] getting ready to shoot and he gets pushed from behind, it's a penalty kick; point to the spot and I think it would have been a just result, but what are you going to do. You can't control the refs."
Rutgers will return to action on Friday, Sept. 12, when they host UC Santa Barbara at 7:00 p.m.
