 "Photo: Brendan Mcinerney / Staff Photographer")
The Rutgers men's soccer team will try to make it two wins in a row tonight, when they take on interstate rival NJIT at Yurcak Field on Busch campus.
The Scarlet Knights are coming off a close 2-1 win over Syracuse Sunday and trying to build momentum for the rest of the year off of the exciting win.
Rutgers jumped out to an early first half lead but took only 14 seconds to give up the advantage.
While outplaying the Orange for the majority of the game, they could not strike again until late.
The Knights managed to finally score on Syracuse in the 86th minute on Tomislav Barisic's first career goal.
"We've used [Barisic] a lot in the game lately, and he responded for us by scoring the game-winning goal," head coach Bob Reasso said.
With the win, the Knights managed to improve their record to 4-6-1, and are seemingly coming into top form at an opportune time.
"We're a young team trying to find ourselves. I'm pleased that the last two games, we've found our rhythm and playing better," Reasso said. "They're rounding into form at the right time of the year."
Now the team has its stride, it will take a quick break from Big East conference play. Instead they will face an Atlantic Soccer Conference foe, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in a game being billed as the Senate Invite.
The Highlanders haven't had a successful season up to this point, only accumulating a 1-8-1 record and 0-2 in the ASC.
Their only win came Sept. 7 against San Diego State in San Diego. Ominously enough for Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights came up winless in the same situation last year.
Sophomore Erik Per Magnusson leads the Highlanders. The Vejbystrand, Sweden native leads the team with eight points and three goals. Gustav Warfving is right behind Magnusson with six points and two goals. The pair have accounted for all but one of the Highlander's goals.
On the season, NJIT has been outscored 18-6. The defense has allowed 1.76 goals a game, led by goalie Josh Osit.
The goalie has a 1.66 goals against average in 12 games and seven starts. The defense has not helped Osit's inflated stats as they have given up 137 shots in only 10 games.
This is only the Highlander's fourth season in Division I and the team has made great advances under head coach Pedro Lopes. Lopes is a former two-time All-American for the Knights under Reasso.
Despite the disparity in records and programs, Reasso isn't underestimating the team or the game.
"It's a local game, it's a Jersey game. They'll be very fired up for it," Reasso said. "They're not having a great year right now, but as our game is, you can't expect a win until you score goals and you win it."
With a critical Big East game coming up, nobody would blame the Knights for looking past a seemingly overmatched opponent. Although the team is coming off what Reasso termed an "excellent game," he knows Rutgers does not have the luxury of looking past anyone at this point in its season.
"When you are 4-6-1, you cannot look past anyone right now," Reasso said. "By no stretch should our team beat looking past them, and I don't think we will be."
With the team reaching peak form, it needs to look at starting a run for the postseason.
Rutgers should be invigorated by the fact they only stand one game out of first place in their division. But the rest of their schedule is mostly conference games, never an easy task for a team trying to get on a run.
"I think that the Big East is a very competitive conference, there are no easy games," Reasso said. "We just need wins, if we want to play ourselves into the NCAA tourney like we did last year."
The win against conference rival Syracuse went a long way toward helping their resume. Now the Knights needs to pick up steam and make its familiar end of season run.
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