RAYMOND - The Northwest Mississippi Community College men's soccer team (3-3-2) had their hands full on Friday night against #10 Hinds Community College (7-1, 1-1) as they dropped to 1-1 in MACCC action after an 8-1 loss to the Eagles on the road. 

The match started out with a blast of offense from Hinds who found the back of the net three times in the opening ten minutes, keeping the Rangers defense on their heels while they worked to find their form. The match settled into a much more even back and forth after the initial blast of scoring and aside from a free kick that resulted in a goal for the Eagles in the 27th minute, Northwest began to assert their offensive plan. 

Northwest broke through in the 37th minute when Francisco Ambrioso received a feed from Michael Starnes and finished it in the bottom left corner of the net from ten yards out to close the gap to 4-1 with eight minutes to go in the first half. 

The Eagles took back some of that momentum with a late goal of their own to send the game to the second half 5-1 and pulled away even further with a shot to open the second half in the 47th minute on a penalty kick after a foul was whistled in the box. 

Two more goals followed in the 63rd and 81st minutes, but it wasn't anywhere near the barrage of shots that the Rangers survived in the first half and Northwest responded with eight shots of their own in the second half after only managing two in the opening 45 minutes. 

Jacob Little was under pressure most of the game but held up well, making eight saves in the match running his career total up to 215 and moving past Tom Spencer who had 210 saves in his career from 2018 to 2019. The total comes in 27 career matches for the Ranger sophomore who has averaged 7.96 saves per game and has a save percentage of nearly 73 percent in his career. 

There were no yellow cards issued in the match to either side and the Rangers only committed ten total fouls in the match. The Rangers put more pressure on the Eagles than their ten total shots showed, earning six corner kicks as well and finding their form much more often in the second half. 

Northwest returns home to face off with Itawamba Community College on Tuesday night at 7:00 pm at the Ranger Soccer Complex. The Indians enter the match at 5-2 and 1-0 in the MACCC, coming off of a 3-0 win over Holmes Community College. The match can be streamed on RangerTV with Matt Infield on the call. You can also follow along with the match on Ranger social media accounts.