TROY, N.Y. - The Bard College men's soccer team lost to 20th-ranked Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4-0, in a Liberty League game on Saturday night.

Bard (4-9-0, 0-4-0 Liberty League) made it obvious early on it was going to spend the night defending, and it did. Shots were just 5-2 at the half in favor of RPI, and the game was scoreless.

After spending much of the night trying to figure out how to get in an around Bard's packed-in defense, it was a direct play that broke the game open. RPI keeper Rob DeWald (Arlington, VA) walked the ball a third of the way up the field in the 54th minute and his kick bounced off teammate Esmir Hadzic (Burlington, VT) at the top of the box. It deflected to Matt Carberry (Auburn, NY) to the left of the box, and he scored left-footed from 18 yards to give the Engineers a 1-0 lead.

RPI scored three goals over the span of three minutes and 12 seconds to blow it open, starting in the 67th minute. Matt Koziol (Poughkeepsie, NY) scored from 20 yards on a direct kick, then he scored again on a header off a corner, and Tim Terrezza (New Providence, NJ) finished the scoring with a goal off another directly-played ball to the top of the box.

Final shots on goal were 14-5 for RPI. Daniel Gagne made two saves for Bard. RPI is 9-2-2, 4-1-0 in the Liberty League.

Bard's task gets tougher next week. They'll play at 13th-ranked St. Lawrence on Friday at 4.