Although the Rutgers men’s 2024-25 soccer season wrapped up last Sunday with a 1-0 victory over Michigan State, it was a very disappointing campaign under six-year head coach Jim McElderry. McElderry led the men’s soccer program to a dismal 6-9-2 overall record and failed to get the Scarlet Knights into Big Ten Soccer Tournament as they finished near the bottom of the conference for a second straight season.
Despite low expectations this season and a projected 9th place Big Ten finish in the preseason polls, McElderry certainly did not capture the hearts and minds of the Scarlet Faithful as he led Rutgers to another failed season. His tenure comes to the forefront and fans are questioning if McElderry is still the right guy to bring Rutgers back to the glory days. McElderry’s seat is heating up and his future at Rutgers is looking dim.
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A once very proud and storied program, Rutgers men’s soccer has sunken to the abyss since legendary coach Bob Reasso stepped down in 2009. Reasso was able to guide Rutgers to 13 NCAA Tournament appearances, three Final Fours, six conference titles, and a 1990 national championship appearance.
Since 2009, Rutgers has hired two head coaches and both have produced just four combined winning seasons and three combined NCAA Tournament appearances. In six years as the top boss of the men’s soccer program, McElderry has compiled an overall record of 41-40-17 and a putrid 18-26-6 record in conference play.
The 2024-25 season saw Rutgers get off to a promising 3-1-0 start as they dominated in early non-conference games with a 3-1 victory in the season opener against Northeastern, a 3-1 win over Princeton and a 2-0 shutout of Lehigh. But in a sudden instant, the Rutgers season went off the rails as they went winless for the remainder of September and much of October.
Between September 6th and October 25th, Rutgers achieved just one win (in a stunner over previously 8th ranked Wisconsin).Some might consider this season a rebuilding year under McElderry given the fact that almost half the team was comprised of 11 freshmen, but this program has completed its sixth year under McElderry’s watch, and it hasn’t improved or built upon its 2022 success.
There is no question that numbers were down this year under McElderry, and proved that Rutgers simply did not have enough horses in the stable to produce goals. Scoring output was down as Rutgers averaged a lowly 1.24 goals per game, its lowest under McElderry since his first season in Piscataway. Rutgers also registered its fewest total shots, shots on goal, and assists since the 2021 season. On a positive note, Rutgers improved slightly on the defensive side compared to last season as they held opponents to 1.59 goals per game while allowing just 37.9% shots on goal. Still, giving up that many goals on average is far too many.
McElderry’s Scarlet Knights proved to be extremely undisciplined this season as they tallied five red cards, which is the fourth most in NCAA Division I men’s soccer and eclipsing last year’s mark of four. Between 2019 and 2022, McElderry’s teams had only been issued four total red cards. A few of the red cards issued to Rutgers during the season were at early moments in critical matches. None other was bigger than the red cards issued early in the first halves of the matches against Providence and Seton Hall as Rutgers played majority of the games down a man and ultimately succumbed to defeat in the end.
There are going to be a lot of tough decisions to make for the next athletic director of Rutgers, and one of those is deciding the fate of Jim McElderry. Does Rutgers give McElderry one more year to prove he can get Rutgers back into the NCAA Tournament, or does Rutgers move on in search of the next coach that can restore this faltering program back to the pinnacle of college soccer? In six years, the results under McElderry have been poor and underwhelming, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting much better.
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