UND.com Game of the Week: Notre Dame Men's Soccer

The UND.com game of the week features an important match-up for the Notre Dame Men's soccer team. The No. 8 Notre Dame men's soccer team came up short on Saturday night, Sept. 29, at Morrone Stadium in Storrs, Conn. trying to knock off fellow top-10 foe, No. 2 Connecticut. They lost to Connecticut by a score of 2-1 and are now 0-2-0 in BIG EAST Blue Division play, 8-2-0 overall. This Wednesday night, Oct. 3, at 7 P.M. (ET) at Alumni Stadium, the Irish face the Pittsburgh Panthers in their third BIG EAST conference contest.

In the match-up on Saturday night, Connecticut led the Irish 2-0 at the intermission. Connecticut scored it's first goal on a penalty kick from Carlos Alvarez in the 29th minute, and the second goal on a tally from Flo Liu in the 36th minute. Both teams had four shots on goal and one corner kick in the opening half.

"We were very good tonight in many facets of the game," said Irish head coach Bobby Clark. "We opened the game very well, but unfortunately we made a couple of errors and they capitalized. The penalty kick was tough because I thought their (Connecticut) guy was going away from the goal. I then thought we had a little bit of a lack of concentration after they scored that goal."

ND midfielder, Dillon Powers

Irish Senior midfielder Dillon Powers scored in the 49th minute. It was his third goal of the season. In the second half, Notre Dame's Dillon Powers' goal in the 49th minute sliced the Connecticut lead in half. The senior midfielder tucked the ball into the lower left corner of the net for his third goal of the season. This score halted Connecticut's scoreless streak at 437:58.

Notre Dame out shot Connecticut 5-2 in the second half and 11-9 for the match, but still could not manage to come up with enough goals for the win.

"I felt we completely controlled the game in the second half," added Clark. "Full marks to our team for handling themselves well and getting a goal back right away in the second half. Playing games like these on the road in front of big crowds could be very useful to us later on in the season."

Notre Dame will play host to BIG EAST Blue Division foe Pittsburgh at 7 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday at Alumni Stadium.

You can view the game live at 7 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday here: http://hqplayer.nbcsports.com/Player.html?PID=103

Cheers!