NEW ULM, Minn. - MLC men's soccer once again found itself behind early in a match and the Knights once again fought their way back to tie it up.
On Wednesday, the Knights held on to secure a 1-1 draw with Crown in an entertaining match to open UMAC play.
The Polars scored in the 7th minute when Carlos Neto played a long ball to Ashton Hosler. Hosler headed the ball to Jared Hernandez, who perfectly placed his shot into the bottom right corner.
Crown carved out 25 more shots and 15 more on goal, but could not find a way past MLC's
Nicholas Russ, who made 15 saves on the day. Russ gave the credit to the rest of his team.
"We've got to look at it from the team perspective," Russ said. "Our entire back line played phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. Our midfielders were in spaces where we should be, we had time on the ball, we played really relaxed and controlled the ball."
The Knights grew into the match after the shaky start and put the Polars under pressure to the tune of 17 shots and five on goal. MLC got on the board in the 34th minute when
Abraham Schlomer passed a through ball to
Silas Gawrisch, who crossed the ball accurately to
Jonah Uhlenbrauck. He headed the ball into the net to tie it up.
Each team had a several quality chances to win the match in the second half, but neither could find a winning goal. The physical match finished with five yellow cards.
"They're playing good soccer," coach Nicholas Schmoller said of his team. "When you play good soccer, sometimes good things happen, sometimes the ball bounces the wrong way, but they really did a lot of good things.
"[There were] a lot of strong performances and I like the fight."
