NAMPA, Idaho – The Crusaders earned a bittersweet morale victory, but certainly could have earned much more.

Fredy Razo's fourth goal of the season gave the Northwest Nazarene men's soccer team an early edge and NNU goalkeeper Ryan Foo stopped a penalty kick, yet somehow No. 1-ranked Simon Fraser still escaped the upset bid with a 2-1 win over the Crusaders on Saturday on the NNU campus.

"I'm very pleased with our performance," NNU coach Coe Michaelson said. "Unfortunately, it feels like we've had a lot of these where we've played well and not been rewarded, so it's a bitter pill to swallow in that sense."

Razo set the tone early for NNU (0-3-2 overall, 0-2-0 GNAC), taking a long, bouncing through ball from John DiLulo and heading over Simon Fraser keeper Brandon Watson, 10:45 into the game.

The Crusaders clung to that 1-0 lead tenaciously, a fact highlighted by NNU's freshman goalie, Foo. With 2:36 left until halftime, Foo dove to his left to block a penalty kick by Lucas Ferritto, then smothered Ferritto's rebound chance as well.

But the top-ranked Clan (6-0-0, 2-0-0) finally broke through 1:46 into the second half when Johannes Hallman booted home a rebound chance after a Robert Hyams free kick.

The tie score seemed to energize the Crusaders, who charged hard to regain the lead, only to be turned aside by Watson who stopped two chances by Cedric Dinane and one more each from DiLulo and Jaime Torres in a six-minute stretch.

"I thought their goalkeeper was fantastic and made a lot of key saves to keep them in the game at a key time when we had a run of play," Michaelson said.

Watson finished with eight saves in the win, while Foo made five saves in goal for NNU.

Still tied, the game came down to a bouncing ball in the 74^th minute, as a Watson goal-kick bounced over the NNU defense to Carlo Basso, who kicked it in for the game-winner.

"We need to keep working and if we play like this we'll get our results, the reward will come," said Michaelson, whose team played the No. 1 Clan tough, trailing 17-12 in shots.

Next up for the Crusaders are road games at Seattle Pacific on Thursday and at Saint Martin's on Saturday.