Photo courtesy of MLC/Michael Wu Martin Luther College’s Nathan Graumann escapes a North Central defender in Tuesday’s 2-0 victory at MLC.

NEW ULM — With a veteran team, the Martin Luther College men’s soccer team is expected to be in the hunt for another Upper Midwest Athletic Conference playoff berth this year, with hopes of possibly gaining a home playoff match.

MLC picked up an important home victory with a 2-0 defeat of North Central in UMAC action on Tuesday.

The Knights (3-3, 3-0) got goals from senior Nathan Graumann, who scored in the first half and tallied his first goal of the season, and Hugo Ugalde-Bemer. Ugalde-Bemer’s second-half goal seemed to put the game out of reach at that point when he scored at 65:51 on an assist from Joel Koelpin.

MLC remained unbeaten in conference play with the victory and it takes off for a game at UW-Superior on Saturday.

Graumann’s goal set the tone offensively when he scored at 30:45 in the second half.

“Basically I just got the ball out wide, Elijah Kroll just played a perfect ball and I just had to make a run and play that perfect ball through,” Graumann said. “It’s just all about moving the ball around and that’s what we did.”

MLC pitched its first shutout of the young season. The Rams struggled to get off many good shots, thanks largely to the MLC defense.

“We’ve been in every game, even the games we lost, we’ve been ahead in at some point in the game,” MLC coach Paul Koelpin said. “I would just put these guys up against everybody, we have a veteran squad with veteran leadership. We’re so solid defensively that if we’re playing our first line defense, they’re going to make it hard for the other team to get a clean and clear shot.”

MLC outshot North Central 21-14 for the match and controlled the ball most of the way. For Graumann, it was a good showing from both the veteran players and the younger players who have made an early impact.

“It’s very important, especially with these guys coming back, just knowing that we can do this, just showing the younger guys too that this is a team that wants to win.

“We can compete with any team in the UMAC once we’re on all cylinders, we just get it going,” Graumann said.

Last week’s UMAC player of the week, Joseph Graumann, led the Knights with 6 shots. Ugalde-Bemer finished with four shots.

Caleb King stopped seven shots in the shutout. North Central committed 10 fouls in the match compared to 7 by MLC.