Rutgers beat UConn women's soccer 2-0 today. Rutgers got to the final four last year, and they still look like a very good team. In their three victories over UConn in the last two seasons, Rutgers has outscored UConn 8-0.
From what I saw today, Rutgers still plays very good defense, and they look great on their corner kicks, as both Rutgers goals came from corner kicks. By contrast, UConn has problems in defending against corner kicks. That has to be a concern, as UConn seems to give up way too many of them (Harvard took 14 corners against UConn in their game on Friday).
The other problem for UConn was a sputtering offense that had trouble connecting with their passes for a good chunk of the game. The Huskies also have a tendency to settle for way too many shots from outside the penalty box for my liking. These problems were certainly present during the games that I saw against Northeastern and BU as well. However, the offense looked better for the last 27 minutes of the game, when Kim Urbanek entered the game for her first playing action of the season. According to WHUS, Urbanek missed the first three games of the season due to "eligibility issues". At any rate, while UConn still did not score, the offensive flow looked a lot better with Urbanek in the game.
As for UConn, from what I have seen so far, the Huskies were definitely a better team last year, as they lost some very solid players to graduation, and the freshmen so far are not yet making big contributions to the play on the field. So at this point the Huskies have a much thinner bench than last year. Playing without Urbanek has not helped at all, but I'm hoping things will improve somewhat now that Urbanek is seeing playing time again.