ATHENS, Tenn. – Tennessee Wesleyan scored twice in five minutes in the second half and goalkeeper Daniel O'Hare made five saves as the Bulldogs held off the Carson-Newman Eagles 2-1 on Monday evening.

"I don't think we pushed too hard early on," Head Coach Richard Moodie said. "I think we thought this game maybe would come easy to us. The boys created enough chances to get goals off of, but I think there were early warning signs from them saying they were going to come up and go at us."

The teams battled to a scoreless draw through one half of play despite each team having chances to break the tie. The best chance for either team came in the 20^th minute when C-N's Jalen Goddard (Chattanooga, Tennessee) hit a shot from just outside the box that beat the keeper to his right, but snuck past the post as well.

The action picked up in the second half with each team again trying move in front, but Tennessee Wesleyan grabbed the lead in the 54^th minutes when a corner by Johnny Le Quesne found the foot of David Baisden, who beat keeper Joe Boyd (Nottingham, England) to his left.

Only five minutes later, the Bulldogs' lead grew to 2-0 when Jordan Jacob took the ball into the box and was able to get a shot past Boyd for his fourth goal of the season.

"We knew coming in, they were a good team that's also well coached," Moodie said. "It's tough when you're behind to a team like that because they are wasting time. Obviously we'd have done the same thing, but they planned well and were able to execute."

In the 65^th minute, Carson-Newman brought their deficit to one when a Baisden foul, which earned him a yellow card, led to a Marius Staalby (Trondheim, Norway) penalty kick. When Staalby capitalized for his first goal of 2016, the Eagles were within a goal.

Over the final 25 minutes of play, C-N furiously tried to create one more chance they could use to tie the game, but the Tennessee Wesleyan defense, led by O'Hare in net wouldn't allow it. The clock finally ran out with the Eagles trying to set up a corner kick.

The Eagles will try and shake off the loss as they move on to face Flagler on Saturday in Florence, S.C. That game will begin at 1:30pm.

-CN-