ROUND ROCK, Texas -- The No. 5 seed Texas Lutheran men's soccer team dropped a 2-1 decision to the No. 4 seed St. Thomas Celts, Thursday night in the quarterfinal round of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) Tournament.
The Bulldogs fall to 5-9-4, ending their season in the league tournament. The Celts improve to 8-7-2 and will take on No. 1 seed Colorado College on Friday.
Texas Lutheran outshot the Celts 19-15 but St. Thomas held a 6-5 advantage in shots on goal. Possession was nearly 50-50 throughout the 90 minutes.
Texas Lutheran attacked early as
Luis Briseno (San Antonio/Madison) attempted the game's first shot three minutes into the contest.
The two teams remained at a stalemate until the closing seconds of the first half as St. Thomas scored the first goal to take a 1-0 lead with 26 seconds remaining in the half. The Bulldogs went in at the break trailing 1-0.
Following a foul in the box, goalkeeper
Ernesto Avila (Houston/Humble) got the Bulldogs on the board, stepping up to make a penalty kick to net his second goal in three matches.
In the second half, Texas Lutheran had several shot attempts but just could not connect.
Raymond Palmer (San Antonio/Clark) and
Chris Cantu (Harlingen/Harlingen) had three shots each in the second half but could not find the back of the net.
In the 88th minute, St. Thomas scored again to bring the game to its final score, 2-1.
The Bulldogs will graduate four seniors:
Carson Alldredge (Spring/Klein),
Jayden Franke (San Antonio/Johnson),
Enrique Alvarado (Point Venture/Cedar Park), and
Christian Cadena (Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico/New Braunfels), who will all graduate as members of the historice 2025 SCAC Championship team. We thank them for all of their contributions to the Texas Lutheran men's soccer program.
For all updates on Texas Lutheran Soccer, follow @tlusoccer on X (Twitter) and Instagram and as always you can find updates on all Texas Lutheran athletics on tlubulldogs.com and all official TLU social media channels (@tluathletics on X (Twitter), @tlu_athletics on Instagram, and @tlubulldogs on Facebook).
