LEXINGTON, Ky. - Battling with an opponent that advanced last season's NCAA Sweet 16, the University of Evansville men's soccer team held strong for 70 minutes in a 4-1 loss to Kentucky in the Aces' preseason opener on Sunday evening in Lexington, Ky.

"I'm very encouraged by what we saw in the first half. To go down a goal to Kentucky, who made the Sweet 16 last year, to come back and create some opportunities and get the goal to tie it at 1-1 at half was very encouraging," said Aces head men's soccer coach Marshall Ray. "We were able to get everybody in who traveled with us on the roster and unfortunately we gave up two goals late to make the scoreline look a little lopsided, but feel like we challenged ourselves today. We got a lot of guys on the field, we got to see a lot of combinations of players. Coming in we had an idea of kind of going through three phases of the match and how would we use that rotation of those guys and stuck to that. Very pleased with what we saw and look forward to getting to work this week. The video is going to help us. We'll have some good things to look at and reinforce and some of the things we didn't do so well, we'll have a chance to correct those before our preseason home opener against Hanover on the 22nd. All-in-all, a good day."

More than 10 minutes passed in the opening of the match without a shot before the Wildcats recorded a shot in the 14th minute. 10 minutes later, Kentucky got on the board first by way of a goal from Luke Andrews.

Evansville answered in the 36th minute as Adam Dahou found Jakub Hall, who finished in the back of the net to equalize the match. The Aces held strong throughout the opening portions of the second half, keeping the match tied until the 70th minute. In the 70th, Kentucky's Carmeron Wheeler put the Wildcats in front for good.

In the final five minutes, the Wildcats added two more goals to finish the night with a 4-1 win.

Fifth year senior Matt Bryant played all 90 minutes between the post for Evansville, making seven saves. The Aces made the most of their opportunities on the night,  recording three shots with Hall, senior Evan Dekker, and sophomore Pablo Guillen each tallying a shot.

Evansville plays its first match at home on Sunday, August 22 when the Aces host Hanover in the team's final exhibition contest at 5 PM in Arad McCutchan Stadium. The Aces welcome the class of 2025 to the match and all UE students signed up for UEFC and following @UEAthleticsMSOC on Twitter and Instagram will be entered to win a pair of Apple AirPods. 

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