The Independence Patriots Men’s Soccer team dominated the Bulldog’s with a 5-1 key conference win against their arch rivals.

The Patriots certainly controlled the tempo of the game after the first twelve minutes of the contest.  The Bulldog’s applied early offensive pressure with two scoring opportunities and the shots went wide of the net.  At 31:00 minutes into the contest a Butler forward smacked a hard penalty kick toward the net and an excellent save was made by the Patriots goalkeeper Omar Arellano.

Then at 25:00 minutes into the match on a breakaway the Patriots leading scorer and outstanding junior forward Cvan Than scored when he drilled a kick passed the Bulldog’s goalkeeper for a 1-0 Patriot lead.

At 17:00 minutes Cvan Than scored his second goal on a nice pass from teammate Chase Davis to rocket a kick passed the goalkeeper into the corner of the net for a 2-0 lead.  Davis was awarded the assist for his hustle and effort.

At 15:00 minutes Cvan Than rushed the net like a bulldozer after receiving a beautiful pass from Nigel Johnson to smash the ball into the net making the score 3-0 giving the Patriots a comfortable lead.  Johnson received the assist on his excellent feed to Than.

In the second half of the match with the score still at 3-0, Butler finally broke through to avoid the shut-out at 29:00 minutes to make the score 3-1.  This score gave the Bulldogs some hope and they picked up momentum applying more pressure on the Patriots defense.

However, the Bulldog’s spark was short lived when with just under ten minutes remaining in the match senior Kevin Lulendo scored the fourth goal for the Patriots giving the home team a comfortable 4-1 lead.  This goal certainly deflated the Bulldog’s.  Then at 7:00 minutes remaining senior Jack Hebert scored an unassisted goal to shut the door down on any comeback effort the Bulldog’s may have had in mind.

Overall, this was a key matchup for the Patriots and Coach Tyler Gibson’s team responded extremely well after a tough loss to Porter Ridge earlier in the week.  The Patriots are now 8-3 on the season and will play Garinger on Monday at home at 6 PM.