LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Physical from start to finish, the Central Arkansas men's soccer team came away with a 1-0 win over Bellarmine Saturday night. Benefiting from an early own goal by the Knights, the Bears held on to pick up their second ASUN win of the year.
 
The victory improves the Bears' record to 3-2-1 and 2-0 in ASUN play, with the team now on a three-match win streak. Zach Schawl was clutch between the pipes making a couple of big saves and picking his spots to come off his line, preserving his second clean sheet of the year.
 
Central Arkansas controlled things from the opening touch, pressing forward into Bellarmine territory and holding serve when the ball would leak back across the half. Rubyn Singh Gill nearly tacked in the first goal in the opening minutes, but the Bellarmine keeper made one of his two saves in the early going. A few minutes later, Karim Diao sprinted up the left side of the pitch, rounding the corner and ducking into the far-left side of the box. Trying to squeeze a pass back through to crashing Bears, the collapsing Knights defense tried to clear the ball, careening it off of one of their own players and into the goal.
 
The way the ball continued to move forward, the Bears seemed ripe to add a second goal while the Knights were still reeling from the defensive miscue. Mathias Bendiksen launched a shot in the 24^th minute, but his attempt was high, yet still threatening.
 
With renewed focus, Bellarmine rebounded from the early goal, changing momentum for the final 15 minutes of the first half, taking five corner kicks in the final third of the first half, knocking on the door of an equalizer. Steady as can be, though, Central Arkansas braced itself and weathered the storm, letting the waves of attack break over like water on rock. At the halftime whistle, the Bears came out still leading 1-0.
 
Into the second half, the momentum stayed with the Knights, who continued to press for a tying score. Schawl and the defense again took a couple of shots in stride, keeping Bellarmine from knotting the score and countering to catch the home team off balance.
 
Jerry Guttierez almost came through on one of those counters, getting played in front and coming up on a terrific scoring chance. Ripping through a shot, he zinged one past the keeper, but pushed it just too far left and off the post. With a win in sight, the Bears dropped its usual high pressure, keeping everything in front of them to protect the win.
 
As the seconds ticked down, Central Arkansas found itself with one more counter to really put things out of reach, but Sebastian Andreassen's header sailed over the crossbar with 20 seconds left, effectively ending the match.
 
The Bears will play two more matches on the road before returning home, starting with a trip to the Bluff City to face Memphis on Tuesday.