Hoya Staff Writer Tuesday, September 19, 2006 Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya

Georgetown is starting to like Fridays a lot more than Sundays. For the second week in a row, the Hoyas defeated a Big East opponent on Friday before falling to another conference foe on Sunday. This weekend, Georgetown followed up a 1-0 road victory over Villanova with a 1-0 overtime loss at Rutgers. Georgetown is now 3-5-0 overall and 2-2-0 in Big East play. The Hoyas are 0-4 in games played on a Sunday. “Playing a game on Friday takes a lot out of you,” Georgetown Head Coach Brian Wiese said. “Both teams tend to be tired on Sunday. We haven’t handled the Sunday games as well as our opponents have. It’s one of those great mysteries for us.” It is a mystery that the Hoyas can put behind them for now, because they will not have to play another Sunday game unless they make it to the Final Four of the Big East tournament. Senior forward and co-captain Ricky Schramm scored his team-leading fourth goal of the season with under three minutes remaining in regulation time to give the Hoyas the win over Villanova (3-5-1, 0-4-0) on Friday. Georgetown junior goalie Joe Devine made a career-high seven saves to earn his third career shutout. Both teams struggled throughout the contest to put together a strong offensive attack because the field was muddy from morning rains and some precipitation during the game. According to Georgetown junior forward Mike Glaccum, the conditions favored the Wildcats because of their style of play. While the Hoyas usually try to string together a number of passes to set up their shots, the Wildcats tend to attack the goal more directly. “The field conditions were pretty terrible,” Glaccum said. “It’s tough to connect six or seven passes together in conditions like that. We had to change our strategy and that tilted the game in their favor a little bit.” Villanova kept Devine busy throughout the game, as the Wildcats outshot the Hoyas 24-11. idway through the second half, Devine made a spectacular save to preserve the shutout. After the ball was bouncing around 18 yards from the Georgetown goal, Villanova’s Mike DelGuercio fired a shot off of a Georgetown defender’s back, sending the ball arching toward the goal with topspin. Devine accurately judged the trajectory of the ball and dove backwards, tipping the ball with his fingertips over the crossbar. “It was a pretty sloppy game,” Devine said. “I just tried to phase that out. It was wet out there and I didn’t want that to affect me.”Joe [Devine] has done a fabulous job for us in goal,” Wiese said. “He’s playing with an air of confidence right now.” Just when it looked like the game was going to go into overtime, freshman midfielder Scott Larrabee lofted a ball over the Wildcat defense toward Schramm, who stood 12 yards from the goal on the left side of the field. Once Schramm collected the ball, only Villanova goalkeeper Jason Friel stood between him and the goal. Schramm fooled Friel with a move to his left and sent the ball into the back of the net for his first game-winning goal of the season. The victory was Georgetown’s third in a row at the Villanova Soccer Complex. Although the weather Sunday was more favorable, Georgetown was unable to create scoring opportunities against Rutgers (2-5-0, 1-3-0), as they managed only two shots on goal compared to Rutgers’ six. Rutgers outshot Georgetown 24-5 in the contest. “We were trying to force the million dollar pass to spring someone to a goal when a simpler pass would have been more effective,” Wiese said. “We just struggled in the first half,” Glaccum said. “We started playing better in the second half. We did a better job of passing the ball and creating more chances. I felt we were doing well, especially in the last 15 minutes.” Georgetown’s best looks both came with under four minutes left in regulation. In the 87th minute, Larrabee headed a long cross from sophomore forward Richard Frank toward Glaccum, who was standing in the middle of the field in front of the goal. Glaccum connected on a left-footed volley, but Rutgers defender Ryan Breznitsky jumped in front of him at the last second, blocking the shot. As time expired, Glaccum found himself in possession of the ball eight yards from the goal after a broken play, but Rutgers goalkeeper Dylan Hastings made a nice save to keep the Hoyas off the scoreboard. Rutgers’ game-winning goal came on an unassisted shot by Chris Moore from nearly 30 yards out in the seventh minute of the first overtime session. “[Moore] uncorked a laser into the upper corner,” Wiese said. Wiese said he was pleased with the way the Georgetown defense performed over the weekend. “What’s improved has been the defending of the midfield and the strikers,” Wiese said. “You have to defend with all 11 players well to keep the other team’s chances to a minimum. Now we have to get ourselves into a better position where we can attack with a little more vigor.” Although both Villanova and Rutgers outshot Georgetown by large margins, Wiese pointed out that nearly all of the shots on the Georgetown goal were from long range and did not pose a threat for Devine. “The mark of a game is not number of shots taken but the number of times that you get behind a team,” Weise said. “Neither team got behind us, so we’re pleased with that.” The Hoyas hope to continue their strong defending when they take on Connecticut, defending Big East tournament champion, in a Big East game on Saturday at 1 p.m. on North Kehoe Field.