AUBURN - It's hard to beat a team that isn't prone to allowing goals.

The Liverpool girls soccer team has shut out eight teams so far this year and in 13 games, has allowed just four goals by four teams, including West Genesee, who handed the Warriors their only loss on Sept. 23.

But Auburn came into Thursday's game against Liverpool knowing that they had a good chance to upset the state-ranked Warriors.

The Maroons also had only one loss coming in and they had already beaten the one team their opponents couldn't, amongst several other good squads.

The team to score first was probably going to be the one that walked away with the win, which was exactly the case when Liverpool's Jordan Miller broke through the Maroons' defense on a pass from Danielle Gannon at the 28:39 mark in the first half. The Warriors were able to feed off that score and earned their sixth straight win, 3-0.

“I thought our girls played hard throughout the whole game, it's just that Liverpool is really good and you can see why they're ranked in the state,” Auburn coach George Cosentino said. “A lot of the scores weren'treally anything spectacular, they just finished on miscommunications by us in the back.”

Liverpool rode the narrow lead throughout the first half, but Christina Ippolito scored her fifth goal of the season on a pass from Jill Benoit eight minutes into the second half to push the gap.

While the Maroons did a great job of containing Warriors' standout Gabrielle Racines for most of the game, she added the final score with 12 minutes left in the game.

Each goal was scored the same way, on scrambles just in front of the Maroons' net, which created confusion for Auburn goalie Virginia Porten, who had five saves.

Both teams managed to get off about the same amount of shots, 9-7, with the Warriors getting the edge.

While Jordan Pelc, Nikki Szcepanski, Marissa Slayton, Abby Gamba and Carrie Lawton each put forth a spectacular effort on both sides of the ball for the Maroons, there was no getting through the Warriors.

Emily McElroy and Kaitlyn Flynn led the charge for Liverpool and goalie Ashleigh Bowers added another six saves in the game, giving her 61 on the season.

“I don't think anybody can get through our defense, we play together as a team and we play to attack,” Liverpool coach Bernadette Dziczkaniec said. “My goalkeeper is probably the top goalkeeper in the county by far, fundamentally and technically she's just solid. When there's someone there to take a shot, she directs so well that the defenders know right where to go. And Emily can play from coast-to-coast. She takes the ball defensively and gets it all the way up and score a goal or at least put us in a position to take one in. She's the rock on our defense, the enforcer, the intimidator.”

While the Maroons were confident going into the game, Cosentino knew they were in for a battle.

“Liverpool is a great, deep team that is very experienced ”Cosentino said. “We knew this was going to be a defensive struggle but it's absolutely prepared us better for sectionals. We've had two excellent wins against West Genesee and (Fayetteville-Manlius) and we came in fired up. But once they got that first goal, they were able to sit back and do what they wanted to do.”

Despite the loss, Auburn still holds a commanding lead in the Colonial American division. The Maroons are 5-1 in division with five games to play.

Auburn has already secured a spot in the Section III tournament.

While obviously pleased with her team's performance, Dziczkaniec gave credit to the Maroons (11-2), who travel to play Cicero-North Syracuse (8-2-2) on Tuesday.

“(Auburn) has knocked off some top teams this year, they never give up and they play as hard as they can,” Dziczkaniec said.

“That's a team that has some pretty big wheels.”