BUCKHANNON – The West Virginia Wesleyan Bobcats opened up Mountain East Conference play tonight in style with a 3-0 home win over the visiting Urbana Blue Knights at Culpepper Stadium.
The win puts head coach Gavin Donaldson's squad at 2-0-1 overall and 1-0 in the MEC.
Conor Davies put Wesleyan on the board in the 36th minute when he played a pass to the back post from Matthew Bentley.
Just 90 seconds later, Guillermo Rueda absolutely crushed a shot about 10 yards inside the midfield line past Urbana keeper Daniel McNicholas.
The game got ugly in the 68th minute when Urbana was hit with two red card ejections.
Zachary Poff was red carded for an illegal slide tackle, and while trainers and players had circled around the injured Wesleyan player, Urbana's Matt Wheeler threw the soccer ball into the grouping, earning a red card and an ejection.
Playing with a two-man advantage and a two-goal lead, Wesleyan controlled the rest of the game and added their third goal in the 84th minute.
Kazuma Takagi played a cross to Juwon Akintunde who scored with a touch in front of the net.
Wesleyan owned a 12-9 margin in shots and a 7-3 advantage in shots-on-goal.
Bobcat keeper Alessandro Armenia turned away three shots in the shutout win.
Wesleyan will return to action on the road this Sunday when they visit the Shepherd Rams for a conference clash at 1 p.m.
(Photo courtesy of Brian Bergstrom/The Record Delta)
