No. 19 Men’s Lacrosse Closes Non-Conference with 21-8 Win Over Bellarmine

Saturday, March 14

Piscataway, N.J.

12:00 PM

Rutgers University

7-2

Bellarmine University

4-6

Bellarmine

Rutgers

No. 19 Men’s Lacrosse Closes Non-Conference with 21-8 Win Over Bellarmine

Mar 14 | Men's Lacrosse

Box Score

PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers men's lacrosse was dominant from start to finish in its final non-conference game of the season, defeating Bellarmine, 21-8, to improve to 7-2 on the season. Heading into its Big Ten opener next weekend against No. 7 Ohio State, RU has outscored foes by a combined margin of 40-12 in the past two games.

Rutgers was led by Colin Kurdyla, who had four goals and five assists. Kurdyla was coming off a 4-goal, 7-assist game on Tuesday against St. John's, giving him a total of eight goals and 12 assists for a 20-point week. Kurdyla, who surpassed 100 career points last game against St. John's, now has a team-high 23 goals and 22 assists for 45 points. The junior has a new career-high in both assists and goals in a single-season.

Greyson Vorgang had three goals for RU in the game. He is second on the team with 19 goals and 25 points on the year.

JJ Aiello, Colin Kelly and David Carroll each had two goals apiece. It was Carroll's first career two-goal game. Kasey Mongillo, Bennett Raphalian, Haydn Sommer, Justin Lawler, Brady Kurdyla, Ryan Splaine, Jack Lonsigner and Brenden Kelly all had two goals apiece for RU.

The Scarlet Knights outshot Bellarmine 57-30 and had a 53-21 advantage in ground balls to drop the visitors to 4-6 on the season. RU continually pressured the Knights into turnovers, 18 of them in total, with Bellarmine having eight failed clears.

RU won 22-of-32 faceoffs, led by John Scarelli going 14-of-18 with nine ground balls. Cardin Stoller made seven saves, with a 53.8% save percentage.

Ryan Splaine led the defense with four caused turnovers. Ben McKelvy had three caused turnovers and Kyle Worsnup added two.

Rutgers raced out to an early lead in a dominant opening quarter, putting the game out of doubt early on. RU led the game 7-0 after 13 minutes of game action. The Scarlet Knights led 11-3 at halftime, and 17-5 late in the third quarter, with RU playing a deep roster of players throughout the second half, settling on the 21-8 final margin.

The Scarlet Knights next begin Big Ten play next weekend. RU hosts No. 7/8 Ohio State next Saturday at 1 pm. That game will be Military Appreciation Day at SHI Stadium, and will be live streamed on B1G+.