Box Score Salt Lake City, Utah — Despite a strong opening 20 minutes, the Mighty Lizards made too many mistakes to overcome the already steep challenge of taking on the nation's third-ranked team Saturday.

With the exception of a few errant touches, all was going as planned for the TMCC Men. They came out firing after the opening whistle, playing excellent defense and connecting passes with ease as they quickly established some needed comfort in the attacking third. The Bruins would draw first blood, however, scoring on a penalty from forward Ryen Jiba after a foul from freshman defender Jacob Duran. TMCC would have trouble recovering, conceding another score from Salt Lake attacker Samuel Owusu just two minutes later before going into the break trailing 0-3.

While the Mighty Lizards would continue to fight, their focus began to wane after going down to the Scenic West leader. Scoring chances were hard to come by for TMCC, a drastic change for a squad that had kept opposing defenses busy consistently by averaging 19 shots per match over their first four contests. They mustered only three shots (two on goal) to the Bruins 13, and had trouble possessing in the middle third as the Salt Lake midfield did an excellent job possessing and limiting space.

The presence of second-year midfielder Efrain Mayorga-Quitiero was certainly missed by the Mighty Lizards on Saturday. The sophomore is likely to miss some time with a knee injury and will hopefully return before the close of the regular season on May 14.

TMCC will look to avenge their 0-1 extra time loss to Snow College (Ephraim, UT) earlier in the season when they return to action this Thursday, April 29.