By Marquis Driver–

The Louisville men’s soccer team took on and defeated the Evansville Purple Aces 3-0 in a Tuesday night match up that was non-stop action from the opening minutes. The Cards immediately pressed the action in the first minute, holding true to their pressuring identity.

Freshman midfielder Tim Kubel drove the ball up the pitch and shot from the right corner, which was blocked and rebounded right back to sophomore midfielder Andrew Brody, who promptly put the ball in the net. Louisville then continued the early onslaught when Kubel capitalized on a penalty kick after Evansville’s Ian McGrath fouled him on an attack to the goal.

From the spectators perspective the game seemed pretty physical with the number of fouls called, 21 in all.

“It really just depends on how the refs interpret the game, to be honest it wasn’t as physical as the Syracuse game we just played but there were less fouls called,” Louisville head coach Ken Lolla said.

The Purple Aces’ aggression worked against them in the game, making them look out of sorts on defense and placing them in bad positions at times.

“We knew with the type of team they were that they’d want to disrupt our flow and stop our attack by slowing the game down, we just did our best to make our opportunities count,” Andrew Brody said, earning man of the match honors for the second time this season.

Louisville capitalized yet again when Evansville players over played a cut made by Ricardo Velazco, in which the ball handler Daniel Keller made the right play and dished it to the wide open Ivan Gutierrez right in front of the net for a score to end their night at 3-0.

The Cardinals have just three games left in the regular season, two of those will be conference games against Clemson at home this Friday night and at Wake Forest, with another one in between vs Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. A first seed tournament placing is still within reach with Louisville being tied with Syracuse and Clemson for the top spot in the ACC.

Focus will be the name of the game from now on. The team is going to take it one game at a time, being careful not to leave any stone unturned.

“Right now it’s really important to win the division, each game has its own importance. But right now we’re going to focus on taking care of Clemson and improving our position in the standings,” Coach Lolla says.

The Cards are on the right track to pull it out, riding a three game win streak into Friday’s tilt vs Clemson at Lynn stadium.

Photo by Austin Lassell / The Louisville Cardinal