LOS ANGELES —Despite only playing well for the first 15 minutes, the Occidental College women's soccer team was less than one foot away from making Wednesday's SCIAC opener against Redlands at Lower Field interesting.

McCaully Patch (Laguna) drilled a 35-yard free kick off the crossbar that would have even the match at one early in the second half, but instead her missed shot started a counter attack and Lihini Weerasinghe finished the second of two break-away shots at the other end, a two-goal swing for Redlands in just seconds.

Meghan King scored a third goal in the 85^th minute, giving the Bulldogs (2-0-1, 1-0 SCIAC) a 3-0 win.

Patch, who led Oxy with three shots on the day, had her best effort miss by just inches on the set piece. Then Weerasinghe broke loose up the left side of the field, peppered one shot off of Oxy keeper Tayler Renshaw (Phoenix), rebounded her miss and finished a second with her right foot.

Renshaw finished with four saves for the Tigers (1-2, 0-1 SCIAC).

Jennifer Franklin had the Bulldogs first goal in the 40^th minute off a nice combination play, assisted by Kristen Arroyo and Kate Van Vuren.

Elissa Minamishin (Waipahu, Hawaii) had Oxy's second best opportunity in the 18^th minute. Taryn Ng (Milpitas) played a long ball from midfield that snuck past the Bulldogs defense,' but Minamishin was met by Bulldogs keeper Linzey Smtih at the six-yard-line.

After initially playing well, Oxy just couldn't keep up.

"We had some opportunities, moved the ball around and actually could have come away with a few goals early in the first half," Occidental coach Colm McFeely said. "But outside of the first 15 minutes we were just disappointing."

The Tigers play at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps on Saturday at 11 a.m.