GRANVILLE, Ohio (September 22, 2022) – The No. 16 Denison University men's soccer team lost for the first time this season as the Big Red came up short, 1-0, against John Carroll University on a windy Wednesday night on the grass at Barclay-Thomsen Field.

The Big Red went into their first match of the season on Barclay-Thomsen Field on the first day of Fall carrying a newly minted national ranking by the United Soccer Coaches. The Big Red had an early chance to get on the board less than five minutes in as Jake Krueger had a shot saved by the John Carroll goalkeeper, Brenden Moher, before Ethan Miracle followed that attempt with a shot of his own that went wide right.

After a pair of saves by Denison's Tommy Prokos in the 16th and 19th minutes, the Big Red defense blocked each of the next four John Carroll attempts while on the other side of the field, Cameron McIntosh hit the crossbar in the 22nd minute, which led to a shot by Vitor Rocha that was saved by Moher.

In all for the first half, Rocha saw all three of his shot attempts saved by Moher while for the Denison defense, an unlucky deflection in the 40th minute went straight to John Carroll's Patrick Koenig, who deposited the ball into the bottom left of the goal from just outside the box.

Despite putting together a better offensive rhythm and using better ball control in the second half, Denison was outshot 6-2 and was unable to put a shot on goal against Moher in the final 45 minutes.

Denison's Head Coach Brandon Bianco spoke after the match and said, "Credit to John Carroll tonight. They are a good team and disrupted us a lot, especially in the first half. We found more of the game in the second and will need to keep working to create better chances going forward. We'll learn from it and move on to Saturday.

In what was a matchup between a Denison team that was undefeated at home (2-0-1) and a John Carroll squad that was undefeated on the road (also at 2-0-1), it was the Blue Streaks who came out on top and improved to 4-2-1 while the Big Red dropped to 4-1-2.

Denison will close out the week on the road at Wilmington College starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, September 24.