Allison Lowrey took advantage of a penalty kick more than an hour into the rain-delayed match to score the only goal of the contest and lift the Scarlet Knights to a 1-0 victory over the UMass Minutewomen before a crowd of 372 spectators at Yurcak Field.

Just as with many of the college football games around the country on Saturday, the Scarlet Knights women’s soccer team had its game postponed for six hours on Sunday, finally getting started at 7:00 p.m.

Coming out in a 4-4-2 formation, Rutgers quickly began creating offensive chances in the early going, moving the ball for scoring opportunities despite the persistent rain that continued to fall. UMass also took advantage of the slick conditions to test Rutgers goalkeeper Emma Bodmer, who made stellar saves to keep the score deadlocked at 0-0.

But while the Minutewomen did put some pressure on the Rutgers net, the real concern came just over 30 minutes into the match when Emma Misal caught a toe in the turf and went down in a heap, only to be helped off the pitch and taken to the locker room. She did not return to action for the remainder of the match.

Shortly thereafter, players began to slide and hit the turf due to the slick conditions, which led to scoring chances for both sides.

The best opportunity for a goal came with less than three minutes to play in the first half when junior Kylie Daigle launched a corner kick to the front of the net. With the ball in the air, Naila Schoefberger headed it towards the net where it rang off the crossbar and away from the UMass goal. But in an all-too-familiar result for RU fans, the first half ended in a scoreless tie.

Early in the second half, Rutgers junior Riley Tiernan began to use the deteriorating conditions to her advantage. As she began attacking down the left flank, UMass defenders either slipped or simply could not keep up, providing her with opportunities that narrowly missed going into the net. In fact, Tiernan became so much of an issue for the Minutewomen that at one point they triple-teamed her, taking her down with an aggressive tackle that resulted in the first yellow card of the match for senior Ella Curry of UMass.

Later in the contest, after Curry took down Allison Lynch, RU was awarded a free kick that led to a wild scramble in front of the UMass net, where a subsequent handball by graduate student Fiona Kane gave RU a penalty kick.

Lining up the chance, Lowrey fired a shot past UMass goalkeeper Bella Mendoza at 65:45 for the first goal of the game and a 1-0 Rutgers lead.

The RU defense then looked to keep UMass attackers to the outside of the pitch in an effort to have both the clock and the weather make a comeback more difficult for their opponents. In fact, UMass would only register one more shot for the remainder of the match, securing the 1-0 victory and another clean sheet for Bodmer.

Now riding a two-game winning streak, the Scarlet Knights will have one week off before opening the Big Ten portion of their schedule against the Indiana Hoosiers in Bloomington on Sunday, Sept. 17 at 1:00 p.m. The match will be carried on the Big Ten Plus Network.