Johnnies steal game late in RU's conference home-opener
To be blunt, this one hurt. You could see heads drop on the Rutgers men's lacrosse team's sideline just as the final horn sounded.
It would not take much explanation to dissect an 11-10 defeat to St. John's Saturday afternoon at the RU Turf Field other than it was a costly missed opportunity.
The Scarlet Knights let a two-goal, fourth-quarter lead slip away and lost it when St. John's Tom Manes scored for the fourth time with 1:50 remaining to give the Red Storm just their fourth win in 20 tries against Rutgers.
"It's a real disappointing loss," said senior Gerhard Buehning, who finished with four goals and an assist. "We knew we needed this one. We came out strong and it would've been big for us to get to 2-0 in the Big East. It's basically a missed opportunity because I felt like we were the better team and let this one get away."
Missed opportunities are starting to become the theme of the 2010 season. This is the third time the Knights outshot an opponent and lost. Saturday they took 38 shots to the Red Storm's 31, won 14 of 24 face-offs and forced 17 turnovers.
"We made some poor decisions on the offensive end and really nothing went our way," said Rutgers head coach Jim Stagnitta. "We shoot ourselves in the foot and I look at the stats and it's another day where we do a bunch of stuff good but just didn't finish the chances when we had opportunities. Give them credit because they didn't miss many shots. It seemed like whenever they shot it, it went in the cage."
Rutgers (5-3, 1-1) had a chance to put St. John's (4-5, 1-1) away in the second quarter after Buehning triggered a 5-0 run that gave the Knights a 6-2 lead seven and a half minutes from intermission.
Then came another squandered opportunity. Three straight goals by the Johnnies meant for another nail-biting afternoon.
"Lacrosse is a game of runs," said senior midfielder Justin Pennington, whose second goal tied the game at 10 with 3:21 remaining. "We got up four and they got it back. Things went back and forth and we got some good opportunities at the end that we didn't capitalize on."
The loss puts Rutgers in a precarious position when it comes to the NCAA Tournament. The team came off an impressive victory over then-No. 11 Notre Dame on the road and found itself just on the outside of the national rankings.
But the non-conference strength of schedule is not great. Both Wagner and St. Joseph's are in the bottom tier of the RPI rankings and victories over Penn State and Marist, while solid, are not going to make anybody stop and stare.
"We just have to get back to work," Stagnitta said. "There are some things that we haven't done well and we have to address that. We'll get back to work and we're going to be fine."
The Knights still have plenty of chances to make an impression. They travel to Jacksonville Saturday and follow that up with a game at No. 5 Princeton.
When they return to Big East play there are still games against No. 2 Syracuse, No. 17 Villanova and No. 13 Georgetown — plenty of time to turn missed opportunities into statement wins.
"Our backs are a little bit against the wall because this one kind of wipes away the win over Notre Dame," Buehning said. "If you look at our schedule we still have some games coming up against tough opponents. We're going to continue to practice hard and figure this thing out as we move forward."
