Down at the break for the third game in a row, Rutgers started the second half of its Sunday matchup against Ohio State knowing what it needed to do. The Scarlet Knights needed to get gritty.

They had trailed after the first half against Johns Hopkins on Feb. 21 and also in the first game against the Buckeyes last Friday. Each time, Rutgers managed to rally back, out-scoring and out-drawing their opponents after halftime to leave with a win.

And the story Sunday was no different. The Scarlet Knights did it again, putting up five goals to Ohio State’s two while making crucial defensive stops in the second half to complete a weekend sweep and improve their record to 3-1.

“We had to fight for the 50-50 balls, and we were able to do that every game,” head coach Melissa Lehman said. “That really helped us control possession, time of the clock, and we felt confident that if we could do that, we were going to be in great shape.”

Rutgers’ 13-10 takedown of the Blue Jays last month was its first win over Hopkins in program history, and Friday’s win over the then-No. 19 Buckeyes marked its first victory against a ranked team since 2017.

The pair of weekend victories were also Lehman’s first at home against Big Ten opponents. The New Jersey native guided the team to a 5-4 start in her first season at the helm in 2020, but the campaign was called off before any conference games could be played.

In those nine games last spring, midfielder Cassidy Spilis debuted as one of the most exciting young players in the Big Ten, finishing with a team-high 33 draw controls while leading all freshmen nationwide with 26 goals. A year later, she’s back in that form. Spilis has 14 goals in the Scarlet Knights’ last three games and has the second-most goals (18) in the country.

“What you see on gameday from her all over the field, obviously on the offense but also on the draw and defensively, that’s what we see in practice every day,” Lehman said. “She raises the level of practice, and it’s great to see the connection she has with all the girls on the team.”

Spilis is the focal point of the Rutgers offense — no other player has scored more than six times — but the Scarlet Knights are finding key contributions from veterans and newbies alike around the rest of the field. Senior captain Taralyn Naslonski scored five goals on the Buckeyes Friday, while her fellow co-captain Hannah Hollingsworth knocked in the game-winner on Sunday.

The team’s defense did allow No. 9 Penn State to score 20 times on Feb. 14, but since then it hasn’t allowed more than 10 goals in a game. Sophomore defender Meghan Ball has already accumulated 10 ground balls, 15 draw controls and seven caused turnovers. Ball corraled a key ground ball pickup with 2:32 left on Sunday that thwarted Ohio State’s last-ditch comeback effort.

Rutgers already has more Big Ten regular-season wins in 2021 than in any other season in program history, but its campaign is really only just underway. Lehman was pleased with how her team adjusted to its first Friday-Sunday matchup, a quirk of the conference-only 2021 schedule that every team in the Big Ten must attempt to master this spring.

The Scarlet Knights will face another two-game weekend series next week, this time against Michigan. The Wolverines are still working through a rough 0-3 start to 2021, and Rutgers will enter that game ranked No. 18 in the Nike/US Lacrosse Division I Women’s Top 20 for the first time in its seven seasons in the Big Ten.

“It’s really about that next game, that next play and that’s our mindset,” Lehman said. “We have to continue to grow and gel as a team and learn from everything we have.”