Box Score Photo by: Tony Leon/ActionWestPhotography.com
SANTA CRUZ – The Whittier College men's soccer program dropped their second straight road contest falling 5-1 to the Banana Slugs of UC Santa Cruz Saturday afternoon dropping their overall record to 0-2.
The Purple & Gold made their way up North to Santa Cruz Thursday afternoon and is beginning a stand of five contests in seven days beginning with UC Santa Cruz and then following with Linfield tomorrow afternoon before returning home to begin SCIAC competition.
The Banana Slugs got on the scoreboard first with an unassisted goal in the 12th minute from Neal Hetzel but saw the Poets even up the score eleven minutes later with a goal from Jon Elvins as he struck a free kick from 40 yards out that floated over an outstretched Matt Pereira.
Then in the 38th minute the Banana Slugs struck once again picking up the garbage around the net as Phillip Murphy knocked in a goal off of a save by Poet keeper David Diaz that put UC Santa Cruz up 2-1 going into the break.
Coming out of the half it was all UCSC as they capitalized off of two red cards that were issued to the Poets Joshua Dredge and Francis Maxwell forcing the Poets to play two men down for a majority of the second half. With two Poet starters out the Banana Slugs were able to increase their lead to 5-1 a margin that was too big to overcome for Whittier.
Whittier turns right back around tomorrow afternoon at 1:30pm to play a tough Linfield squad without both Dredge and Maxwell who are forced to sit out a game due to the red cards.
