HAMMOND, La. – A valiant second-half comeback fell just short Friday night as the Lamar University Cardinals dropped a 3-2 decision to the host Southeastern Louisiana Lady Lions in a Southland Conference soccer game.
 
LU (6-9-0 overall, 2-4-0 Southland) fell behind 3-0 in the first half before making a game of it thanks to two goals by Jordan Mulnix.
 
"I'm proud of them for the comeback, but we can't keep falling behind in the first half," LU coach Orlando Cervantes said. "We had a game plan, but we didn't follow it until it was too late."
 
The Cardinals are now 1-8 when allowing the first goal, and Friday's first goal happened quickly, as Bri Singh gave the Lions (9-3-1, 4-2-0) a 1-0 lead just 1:45 into the game as she ripped a shot past LU goalkeeper Lauren Lovejoy.
 
Southeastern Louisiana made it 2-0 at the 13:37 mark of the first half as Gisenia Utreras, the leading scorer in the Southland Conference, made it 2-0 as she converted a pass from Singh and put it into the upper part of the net past a stunned Lovejoy.
 
Utreras made it 3-0 with 6:26 remaining in the first half with her second goal of the game and 10^th of the season with the assists being credited to Singh and Lauren Lorentz.
 
The Cardinals got on the board a little more than 17 minutes into the second half when Mulnix took a beautiful pass from Mari Olastuen and beat Southeastern Louisiana goalkeeper Hope Sabadash for her eighth of the season. Olastuen's assist was her eighth of the season, extending her school record.
 
Alexus Aviles had a chance to make it 3-2 with a little more than four minutes remaining as she got past Sabadash only to see a Southeastern Louisiana defender make a great play to prevent a goal. Mulnix did beat Sabadash about a minute later for her team-leading ninth goal of the season, with Megan Campbell picking up the assist.
 
The Cardinals pulled out all of the stops to get the equalizer in the dying minutes, but couldn't get another shot past Sabadash.
 
"We knew it was going to be a high-scoring game. You had the two top-scoring teams in the conference going at it," Cervantes said. "It's just hard to come back from a three-goal deficit."
 
Lovejoy made 10 saves for LU. Sabadash turned aside four shots to get the win.
 
"We did a much better job preventing them from getting good scoring chances in the second half," Cervantes said. "We were able to keep their shots to the outside."
 
The Cardinals return home next weekend for their final two games of the season at the LU Soccer Complex. Abilene Christian provides the opposition at 7 p.m. Friday, while Incarnate Word comes in at 1 p.m. Oct. 18.
 
"Every game is important the rest of the way," Cervantes said. "We know what we have to do if we want to get into the conference tournament. We just have to go out and do it."