Rutgers a Work in Progress with Some Promise

A 13-5 rout at Loyola on Saturday didn’t exactly qualify as a gut-check for a Rutgers team coming off a nine-goal loss at home to Army.

What it did constitute was improvement.

The Scarlet Knights (3-1) were better in the goal, better on faceoffs, dramatically better and more well-rounded on offense. And so they head into March with both work to do and some promise a new-look team can sustain early success better than they did a year ago when a late fade left them 8-6.

“I thought we had a complete game and the team played well and they’re starting to gel each week on the field and in drills and practices, and each opportunity to play on game day is helping us,” coach Brian Brecht said. “That’s what we need to do. We don’t want to be peaking right now going into March. I’m happy we’re seeing progress each week.”

The first month of the season came and went without a handful of graduate transfers. Defensemen Harris Hubbard (Washington and Lee) and Peter Rizzotti (Dartmouth) and attackman Colin Kelly (Canisius) have yet to make their Rutgers debuts, and defensive midfielder Mason Edwards (UMBC) played only briefly in the season opener against Lehigh before leaving with an injury.

Brecht said all the players who are unavailable are week to week, so help could presumably trickle in as the season unfolds. For now, the more pressing matter for the Scarlet Knights is establishing reliability all over a new-look roster.

On offense, that means finding production beyond attackman Ross Scott and midfielder Shane Knobloch. That didn’t happen in the loss to Army; Knobloch and Colin Kurdyla both had hat tricks but were the only players to score. It did occur against Loyola, with Jack Aimone and Dante Kulas both collecting three goals.

Both Aimone and Kulas had 25-goal seasons last year but arrived at them in different ways. Aimone scored in all but one game, had a stretch of five outings without a multi-goal showing and finished with a four-goal burst against Maryland in the Big Ten tournament. Kulas had 20 goals in the first half of the season but found himself the target of greater attention from defenses when the Scarlet Knights lost Brian Cameron to injury.

How steadily they — and Kurdyla — can complement Scott and Knobloch will help reveal how effective Rutgers’ offense will be.

“Having Aimone be consistent, having Dante be consistent, having the new freshman Colin Kurdyla who’s starting on the first midfield with Aimone and Knobloch, having him be consistent,” Brecht said. “We don’t need him to be the lead guy, but he needs to be a good consistent option with the other guys that are the knowns.”

Last week also represented progress in the cage, where redshirt freshman Cardin Stoller stopped 75 percent of the shots on goal (15 of 20) after back-to-back weeks below 45 percent.

There are bound to be ups and downs with most first-time starting goalies, and Rutgers is encouraged by his development over the last month.

“We don’t want to accept anything — but it’s certainly natural,” Brecht said. “C’mon, you have a freshman who started his first game against Lehigh three weeks ago. We’ve been happy with him. You always want more — you want more resources, you want more facilities, you want more recruits, you want more out of your starters. But to be fair, there’s going to be some growing pains.

“To not have a good game against Army and to go back to your hometown in Baltimore, being a guy who played at [Boys’ Latin] and had a lot of success in high school with all the friends and family and people asking for tickets, give him a lot of credit. He was focused and had a good week of practice and was mature and gave us a great game.”