The men’s soccer team finally earned its first Big East win of the season Saturday, and it did… The men’s soccer team finally earned its first Big East win of the season Saturday, and it did so in dominant fashion.

Justin Boehm and Alex Grayson scored early goals for Pitt and Sam Luffy added an insurance tally in the second half to push the Panthers by Rutgers 3-0 Saturday afternoon at Founders Field.

Pitt moves to 1-2-2 in the Big East and 6-5-2 overall, while Rutgers remains winless in conference play at 0-5-0 and 3-8-1 overall.

The win comes as relief to a Panthers team that felt it should have come out of its first four Big East games with more than just two draws, against Syracuse and Marquette.

“We feel like we didn’t get the points that we wanted, out of Syracuse and Marquette especially,” senior Alex Betancourt said.

“We needed to start winning some games if we want to make the Big East tournament.”

The top-six teams from each of the Big East’s two divisions qualify for the tournament. With the win, Pitt holds the sixth and final spot with four games left to play.

Boehm opened the scoring against the Scarlet Knights in the 19th minute when he one-timed a cross from Terry Boland past Rutgers goalkeeper Adam Klink for the 1-0 lead.

Pitt added another goal nine minutes later when a Rutgers defender took down a Panther in the box. Officials awarded a penalty kick, and Grayson converted it to put Pitt up 2-0.

“Over these last few games, he’s definitely coming into his own,” head coach Joe Luxbacher said of Grayson.

After not scoring through Pitt’s first 10 contests of the season, Grayson now has two goals in his last three games. The freshman, however, left the game in the 64th minute with a concussion.

“He got tripped up and slammed his head on the ground,” Luxbacher said.

According to Luxbacher, he will most likely miss Pitt’s game against Georgetown this Wednesday but he may return to the lineup after that.

Sam Luffy added an insurance goal in the 67th minute to put a Rutgers comeback out of reach. Terry Akpua sent a high cross over to Luffy, who redirected the ball past Klink with a diving header. The junior leads the Panthers with four goals and nine points on the year.

With a three-goal cushion, goalkeeper Hami Kara turned aside five shots for his sixth shutout of the season. Rutgers out-shot the Panthers 15-9 and out-cornered them 8-4, but Luxbacher said the stats are due to a change in how his team plays.

“We’re playing a little bit more conservatively defensively,” he said. “Shots are deceiving. Early in the season, we were out-cornering teams significantly and not getting anything for it. [Rutgers] had some chances, but we scored three good goals.”

Pitt used the same game plan at West Virginia last Wednesday. The game remained scoreless until the 64th minute, when the Panthers couldn’t clear a ball and the Mountaineers capitalized.

“We stuck to the same game plan [against Rutgers] that we did against West Virginia,” Betancourt said. “It’s really working well. Even against West Virginia, we played well.”

West Virginia won that game, 2-0, out-cornering the Panthers 11-2 and out-shooting them 16-5.

“65 minutes in and they really didn’t have a good look,” Luxbacher said. “They had a lot of shots — long shots, wild shots — and then their first goal, it was a bad decision. We didn’t clear a ball we could have.”

Ruben Garrido scored the game-winning goal for West Virginia off the miscue. Pitt pressed to try to even the score, but the Mountaineers took advantage and added a second goal in the 84th minute when Abel “Shadow” Sebele beat Kara on a break with a low, hard shot.

“Their second goal was because we were pushing everybody forward,” Luxbacher said. “If we weren’t one goal down, we wouldn’t have pushed everybody up.”

Pitt resumes play Wednesday against Georgetown at 7 p.m. at Founders Field. The game will be the last Pitt men’s soccer game at the field, as the program will call the new Petersen Sports Complex home next year.

After starting the year 2-4-1, the Hoyas enter Wednesday having won six straight games. They handed Villanova its first Big East loss on Saturday, and they defeated Seton Hall 6-0 last Wednesday.

“Georgetown’s really rolling,” Luxbacher said. “We’ll have our hands full Wednesday for sure.”

But Betancourt said the Panthers won’t tinker with the game plan they have had success with.

“We’re going to stick to the way we play and have other teams have to adjust to us,” he said.