Santa Cruz, Calif. - Amber Rodriguez scored an early goal and Fresno Pacific's defense took care of the rest as the Sunbirds put away UC Santa Cruz 1-0 on the road to post their third consecutive shutout victory.

Nayeli Deniz played the ball through the defense in the 12th minute and Rodriguez followed with a fantastic finish for the freshmen's first goal of her college career. For the third straight contest, the one-goal cushion would prove to be enough as Caressa Archie, Alyssa Nakaguchi and Clara Buettner formed an impenetrable backline in front of goalie Sarah King, who was back in goal to post the shutout after missing Saturday's game with an injury.

"This was a good team effort and good for building confidence into Saturday's game with Notre Dame," said head coach Erik Farfan. "It wasn't our best performance overall, but we continued to defend well and got a great goal. We were able to get a lot of different players on the field and work on some things tactically as well. We're going to continue to work on separating ourselves from our opponents and extending leads to provide more of a cushion for our defense to work with."

The Sunbirds improved to 4-3 on the season while dropping the Banana Slugs to 6-4-1. FPU has now posted shutouts in four of its seven matches.

The team returns home this Saturday to face Notre Dame de Namur (4-5, 2-1 PacWest). The Argos are led by PacWest leading goal-scorer Adriana Cortes, who has seven goals and two assists on the season and will test her talents against a prolific Sunbird defense that has now gone 273 minutes without allowing a goal.