Rutgers goalkeeper Emily Nicholls earned Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors on Monday after a huge weekend in goal for the Scarlet Knights.
The award followed her best outing yet in Rutgers’ overtime win over No. 6 Iowa on Friday. Iowa fired 30 shots at the Scarlet Knights, and Nicholls turned aside 16 of them, including a diving stop on a penalty stroke attempt in overtime to help keep Rutgers in the game and seal the victory.
Her 16 saves are the most by a Rutgers goalkeeper since at least 2012, with single-game records tracked back to the start of the Meredith Civico era. The total also stands as the most by any Big Ten goalkeeper this season and the highest by a conference keeper since 2024. It was Nicholls’ second career game with 13 or more saves, making her the only Rutgers goalkeeper in the last 10 years with multiple such performances.
Nicholls now has 77 saves on the season, and 24.6% of that total came during Rutgers’ road trip against two top-6 opponents, No. 6 Iowa and No.
2 Northwestern. She ranks second in the Big Ten with 4.53 saves per game, along with a 72.0% save percentage and a 1.60 goals-against-average.
She becomes the fifth different Scarlet Knight to pick up a Big Ten weekly honor this season, joining Anna Cogdell (Co-Defensive), Olivia Fraticelli (Co-Offensive), Eden Doucelin (Freshman) and Lauren Iaccio (Freshman).
Rutgers wraps up the regular season this weekend and hosts Indiana on Friday at noon.