NAMPA, Idaho – The Northwest Nazarene men's soccer team was beset by injuries and suspension Saturday.

Add in a tough Western Washington team and it combined for a 5-0 loss for the Nighthawks in a Great Northwest Athletic Conference match at NNU Field.

"I don't want that to be an excuse," NNU coach Joel DeLass said. "We just got outworked today. We didn't match the intensity from the onset. There was a spell early in the second half where we raised the level, but then it dropped again."

Daniel Brendel and Jose Labanino-Ramos were both out again with injury, Alex Mitrovic and Sam Ho were limited and Jake Levine was out because of Thursday's red card.

Three freshmen started – Brandon Parsio, Dominic Abdel-Ahad and Trevor Putnam – and three others played significant minutes (Ty Iannone, Grant Larson and Landon Butler).

"You have to play for 90 minutes and with the young group we had out there today, you've got to learn that," DeLass said. "It's tough to learn this way, but you learn from the hard moments and hopefully we get something out of it as we head into a tough road game next week."

Jacob Hillyer made six saves, while Rafael Junqueira had two shots on goal. Parsio, Abdel-Ahad and Logan Wood had one each.

The Nighthawks (3-6-1 overall, 3-2-0 GNAC) are on a bye Thursday before playing at Seattle Pacific on Saturday.