ST. LOUIS – Saint Louis senior midfielder Alex Sweetin scored early in the second half to propel the 20th-ranked Billikens to a 1-0 victory against No. 3 Creighton in front of 3,070 fans Wednesday night at Robert R. Hermann Stadium.

The Billikens improve to 6-2 on the season, which includes a perfect 4-0 mark at Hermann Stadium. Creighton, which entered the match No. 1 in the NCAA’s Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) and as high as No. 3 in the national polls, dips to 5-2-2.

Sweetin’s tally, his third in as many games, came at the 50:20 mark. After a giveaway off a Creighton goal kick, Sweetin found open space roughly 23 yards out and rifled a shot past Creighton keeper Connor Sparrow for the game’s only goal.

“I took my touch right in the middle and could have passed it, but I decided to shoot and it worked out,” Sweetin said. “I work on that all the time in training, and it’s great to actually see it happen in a game.”

The Billikens were forced to play a man down for much of the second half after Filip Pavisic was issued a red card in the 48th minute.

Senior goalkeeper Nick Shackelford made three saves, several of them dazzling in the second half, for his fourth clean sheet of the season.

“This was a great win for us,” SLU head coach Mike McGinty said. “There is a reason Creighton came in as the No. 1 team in the RPI. We played like a team that could be playing for championships. I’d like to thank our crowd tonight – we had more than 3,000 fans here and our guys really fed off their energy.”

The Billikens play another ranked opponent this weekend when they travel to Richmond, Va., to take on VCU on Sunday, Oct. 2. The Rams are ranked as high as No. 20 on CollegeSoccerNews.com. While SLU and VCU are both members of the Atlantic 10 Conference, Sunday’s match will count as a non-conference game.

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