Akron wasted little time putting away the Oakland University men’s soccer team Wednesday night, scoring a goal just over three minutes in to the game and finishing with a 5-0 win.

The top-ranked Zips got their second goal in the 13^th minute and held a commanding 4-0 lead at halftime. Akron added another goal early in the second half after OU was forced to play a man down once defenseman John Timm got sent off with a red card.

“We wanted to come in and compete but we know that they’re exceptionally talented and that we couldn’t give them too many quality shots on goal or they were going to put them away,” Oakland coach Eric Pogue said. “To be fair, I thought we had some moments moving forward that were pretty dangerous but unfortunately we made some mistakes in the back and teams like this are going to punish you. They’re the number one team in the country for a reason.”

Oakland’s best chance to score came in the 17^th minute of the first half when Makesi Lewis beat an Akron defender and found some space, but a challenged shot sprayed wide of the net. The Golden Grizzlies (3-7) were outshot 27-5 on the night.

Akron’s first two scores of the game were contributed by Darren Mattocks, who found the back of the net on two of his three shot attempts. Chad Barson put the Zips up 3-0 after he redirected an Akron free kick with a header inside the box.  The fourth goal of the game was an own goal surrendered by the Grizzlies after a free kick deflected off an Oakland defender and into the net.

“I’m liking this team right now, we’re coming together chemistry wise and we’re looking forward to the second half of the season,” Akron coach Caleb Porter said. “No question our goal is to win a national championship. This team is hungry. Last year we were the number one team in the country and we fell short so I think these guys are driven to make sure that doesn’t happen again and that we bring home a national title.”

The Golden Grizzlies, however, are just looking to get their feet back underneath them and improve their record with an upcoming schedule of four straight home games. To this point in the year, Oakland has played a grueling schedule which Coach Pogue called the toughest in school history.

“We put a schedule together to play the best teams in the county … we need to get back on track. It’s been a frustrating year, and I guess we did it to ourselves by the schedule we put together, but we’ve got to rebound against Loyola and then head into our next conference game, which is going to be extremely important for us. Once you get into the conference tournament anything can happen.”

Oakland host Loyal Saturday at the OU Soccer Field and then will have a week off before resuming conference play with a home game against UMKC Oct. 16