PISCATAWAY, N.J. – No. 6 Rutgers men's lacrosse earned a top-10 win on Saturday afternoon, improving to 4-0 on the season with a 13-10 over No. 10 Army.
The Scarlet Knights were led by six goals in the game for
Ronan Jacoby, who tied his career-high with the six tallies, which came on just six shots on goal.
Shane Knobloch and
Brian Cameron each had a hat trick, with the trio combining for 12 of the 13 goals on the day.
Ross Scott had the other tally for RU.
Colin Kirst made 15 saves on the day.
Jonathan Dugenio was 14-of-25 on faceoffs, while
Jaryd Jean-Felix and
Zackary Franckowiak had two caused turnovers on the day. Jean-Felix led the way with four ground balls, while Franckowiak,
Bobby Russo,
Ethan Rall and
Tommy Coyne all had three.
RU jumped out to a 7-1 game coming out of the gates, limiting Army to one goal in the first 20 minutes of the game. The Black Knights battled back, cutting the advantage to 7-5 at halftime.
In the second half, Army was able to tie the gam at 8-8 with 9:17 to go in the third quarter. Rutgers countered with a 4-0 run at a crucial time, expanding the home team's lead to 12-8. From there, RU was able to finish off a 13-10 victory.
"We've been working all week on our game plan and continuing to build from the week before. That's really what we did and we played unselfishly. I was put in good positions to finish the play, but we really played just good team offense. We executed how we needed to. The defense did a great job, and made the necessary adjustments after their run. We kept grinding, played hard the whole time and dug it out."
"We had a really good game plan. The defense definitely did their job, holding a team like that to 10 goals is really impressive. We moved the ball on offense a lot better than we had. We have a lot of experience on this team and a ton of guys that can score. We have a lot of variety on offense and when they take one guy away, we have other guys that can step up."
With the Victory
- Rutgers won its 24th game in the all-time series with Army, which has been played 84 times dating back to 1923, the second most played series by RU.
- Rutgers started the season 4-0 for the first time since 2017.
- Rutgers win over Army was the program's first victory over the Black Knights since 2017.
- The win was RU's first ranked win of the season and 25th lifetime.
- RU now has six ranked wins, and four top-10 wins in the past two seasons.
- This was Rutgers' 12th lifetime win over a top-10 foe. Nine of those have come under head coach Brian Brecht and since the program joined the Big Ten in 2015.
- RU is 4-3 in the past seven games against top-10 teams and 6-3 in the past nine games against ranked teams.
- Rutgers became the first team in the nation to reach a 4-0 mark this season.
- Rutgers improved to 4-6 against Army under head coach Brian Brecht.
- Prior to last season's Covid-adjusted conference-only slate, this matchup had been played annually every year since World War II.
- The game was the program's Military Appreciation Day as at halftime RU honored past letterwinners who have served or are currently serving in the military.
- Ronan Jacoby tied his career-high with six goals. It was his most goals as a Scarlet Knight, previously scoring six goals in a game four times with Division III Wesleyan.
- Jaryd Jean-Felix tied his career-high with four ground balls.
- Mitch Bartolo, Ross Scott and Ryan Gallagher tied previous career-highs as each had two assists.
- Zackary Franckowiak made his season debut with three ground balls and two caused turnovers.
- Rutgers started the same lineup for the second consecutive game for the first time this year.
Gallery: (2-19-2022) Men's Lacrosse Topples No. 10 Army
No. 6 Rutgers men's lacrosse is back in action next Saturday against another ranked opponent. The Scarlet Knights travel to Baltimore to face No. 14 Loyola on Saturday, February 26, a noon start. The game against No. 10 Army is the first in a stretch of three games out of four against ranked team, extending to a matchup with No. 18 Princeton on Saturday, March 12.
