Chilliwack, BC -
Jeevan Dhaliwal scored his first of the season for the Cascades, but a pair of second half strikes from the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns gave them all three points at Exhibition Field on Friday night.
The Cascades see their record fall to 1-6 this season, while the Pronghorns improve to 3-2-3 so far.
How it happened:
UFV struck first, as
Kian Proctor drove up the right wing before playing a cross in behind the Pronghorn's defence. Dhaliwal made a decisive run to meet the ball before placing his first touch into the left corner of the net to make it 1-0.
The Pronghorns best chance of the first half came in the 38
th minute, as a shot from Simon Rolfson found its way past UFV goalkeeper
Kody Torrance but was unable to beat the right post.
The Cascades looked to double their lead in the 52
nd minute, but Lethbridge keeper Armaan Thawer dove out to cut off a dangerous ball in from
Adam Szymanski on the free kick, before smothering the rebound at the foot of UFV's
Bhagvir Sidhu.
Just moments later, Lethbridge's Alasdair Coyle was judged to be taken down in the box by a Cascades defender, and Will Hughes stepped up to deposit the resulting penalty kick and level the game.
Just five minutes later Hughes and Coyle combined again. Hughes whipped in a corner kick that was met by the head of Coyle, who flicked it into the top left corner to give his team the lead.
UFV pushed to equalize late and despite a couple of chances, struggled to find the goal. A pair of yellow cards in the 88
th and 90
th minutes to UFV's Szymanski resulted in a sending off, and sealed the result.
Quotable:
UFV head coach Tom Lowndes
"I thought we were good first half, we created chances. They had some chances too, but I thought we had the better of them in the first half, and probably could have scored two or three."
"There were some good things. It's no secret right now that we're down to bare bones because of injuries and sometimes we didn't have the intensity in the second half. Credit to Lethbridge, they fought for their lives and their athleticism caused us problems second half. We didn't deal with it, and we made a couple bad decisions. The game is made of moments, moments change games, and we've given a penalty away to go 1-1 and we talked at half time about not giving them set pieces and they've scored off a set piece."
Up Next:
The Cascades now turn their focus to Sunday, as they host the MacEwan University Griffins in Abbotsford. Kickoff is set for 12:30pm at Rotary Stadium. Meanwhile, Lethbridge will head to north to take on the UNBC Timberwolves in Prince George on Sunday afternoon.
