Rutgers looks to build off 20-goal performance in upcoming matchup with St. John's
After a dominant 20-9 victory over Quinnipiac in its season opener last Saturday, the Rutgers men's lacrosse team will look to build off a dynamic attacking performance going into its second game of the year against St. John's.
While the Red Storm are coming off a disappointing 4-10 campaign in 2019 (when they went 0-5 in Big East play), they were far from an easy out when the Scarlet Knights (1-0) grinded out a 19-15 win in Queens, New York. Were it not for a six-goal run in the fourth quarter from Rutgers, St. Johns would have easily erased the Knights’ postseason chances before conference play even got underway.
The year 2020 isn’t expected to go much better for the Red Storm: They were picked to finish sixth in the Big East this year.
The big question in this matchup will be if Rutgers can match the dynamic attacking production that was present against the Bobcats in week one. Junior attacker Ryan Gallagher led the way with a 4-goal outing, and senior attacker Kieran Mullins matched a career-high five assists as the Knights cruised to a 9-goal lead in the first half and held on in the second for an emphatic, albeit expected, opening day rout.
St. John's does have at least one potent attacker in the All-Big East Preseason Team member Mike Madsen, who finished with 25 goals and 22 assists in 2019. Madsen made himself known in the last meeting between Rutgers and and the Red Storm, scoring 4 goals and adding an assist.
One area where the Knights could exploit a matchup advantage would be at the X. St. John's primary faceoff taker Colin Bosak finished 2019 with a win percentage of 45.9 percent.
While Rutgers wasn't much better itself last year, it showed some promise against Quinnipiac: Senior midfielder Palmer Lloyd went 16-of-26 at faceoff last Saturday in what was his first game played since 2017, and the team as a whole finished 20-of-33. Another performance like that, and it will be very difficult for the Red Storm to maintain sustained possessions.
Another bright spot for the Knights will be in goal, where junior goalkeeper Stephen Russo showed he was worth all of the hype last week. In his first day on the job replacing last year's goalkeeper, Max Edelmann, Russo allowed only 9 goals on 32 shots.
Goaltending is a major question mark heading into the season for St. John's. While it will be returning its starter in Brody Agres, he was plagued by inconsistency last year. Agres started 13-of-14 games for the Red Storm but allowed 12.8 goals per game and only saved 48.7% of his shots.
Rutgers will also look to get out in transition and turn defense into offense again. Last week, it held a 58-32 shot advantage and caused 25 turnovers.
For the Knights, the biggest obstacle might not be in terms of talent or tactics, but rather the mental challenge of taking it one game at a time. After this contest, they head into a difficult two-game road trip against No. 15 Army and No. 14 Loyola, both of whom defeated Rutgers at home last year.
Winning at least one of those two games would go a long way toward keeping the Knights in the tournament hunt down the stretch.
That will not matter though, if they overlook a struggling St. John’s team that poses many challenges. For Rutgers to head to West Point on a roll, it has to come out strong against the Red Storm.
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