Women’s Soccer: Pitt goes scoreless over weekend

When the Pitt women’s soccer team faced off against Seton Hall on Sunday, it marked the first… When the Pitt women’s soccer team faced off against Seton Hall on Sunday, it marked the first college matchup between Panther midfielder Katie Ruhe and her younger sister, Amie. It took some of the sting out of the 3-0 loss for the Pitt senior.

“Actually, at one point in the game she got hurt,” Katie Ruhe said. “Our goalkeeper [Kristina Rioux] is my roommate, so she knows my sister well, but she actually took my sister out a little bit. [Amie] was down, so I ran from our team over to where she was to help her up … She had a charley horse, so I stretched her leg out and all that. It was fun. It was a nice little battle. She knew better than to talk trash afterwards.”

Despite enjoying the game against her sister’s team, Ruhe, and the rest of the Panthers, ended the weekend without scoring in either of their two games.

Pitt battled Rutgers to a scoreless tie on Friday night before dropping the decision to Seton Hall on Sunday. The Panthers (1-7-4, 0-2-2) have yet to win a game against a Big East opponent.

If the Panthers hope to turn things around, they need to figure out how to put the ball in the net. They’ve been outscored 28-7 this year — a disadvantage of 0.58 to 2.33 goals per game.

“We’re at a point right now where we can’t finish our chances,” Ruhe said after Sunday’s loss. “Until we can, our record’s not going to change. We’re not going to win games until we start putting the ball away.”

Pitt’s defense kept the team in the game on Friday night. Pitt goalkeeper Kristina Rioux made five saves en route to her first individual shutout of the season.

“To get this shutout, it was something we’ve needed for the past couple of games,” head coach Sue-Moy Chin said after Friday’s game. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the team defense. I thought our goalkeeper, Kristina, had an outstanding game. But we’ve got to put chances away.”

The Scarlet Knights outshot their hosts 17-11, and the Panthers mustered just one shot on goal. Pitt’s closest scoring attempt came with 10:36 left in the second half. Junior Ashley Cuba — who leads the Panthers with four goals this season — beat diving Rutgers goalie Emmy Simpkins, but the ball drilled the left post and bounced out of bounds.

“It was a brilliant shot,” Chin said. “I thought it was going in. But we’ve got to put those chances away. We had opportunities, we had shots, we just weren’t getting them on frame. It’s those little things that make a big difference. That’s definitely going to continue to be our focus going forward.”

“We are building momentum,” she added. “We’ve been playing much, much better the last three games that we’ve played — all Big East games. Every game, we’ve been better. We still need that productivity from our forwards, and that’s the final missing piece.”

Cuba said after Friday’s game that she thought her team played “fairly well” against the Scarlet Knights (6-3-1, 1-1-1), but that the Panthers need to finish.

That didn’t happen on Sunday.

Seton Hall barely outshot Pitt — 13-12 — yet was able to sneak three past Rioux to secure the victory. Taylor Wilson, Katie Ritter and Caitlyn Milazzo scored for the Pirates, who improved to 7-2-2 on the season and 3-1 in the Big East.

Despite the loss, Ruhe said she didn’t think her team was regressing.

“I don’t think we took a step back,” she said after the game. “Our defense played well and our offense played how they’ve been playing all season. I think they outplayed us offensively, obviously, because we couldn’t finish anything. We couldn’t put our opportunities on goal and their defenders were able to clear stuff out. It just didn’t work out for us today.”