The Bruins’ attack needed 47 minutes to find its stride, but once the first goal was scored, it opened the floodgates.

UCLA men’s soccer (3-2-1) wrapped up a string of nonconference play with a 4-0 win over UC Irvine (3-3-2) on Saturday night. The Bruins had chances, but it wasn’t until the second half that the offense broke through.

The Bruins came into Saturday’s game off of a 4-1 defeat to Cal State Fullerton in their previous contest. In the first half of the Irvine game, they dominated possession but struggled to break through and convert chances. Irvine’s defense remained stout and allowed almost no space for UCLA to move the ball in the box.

The tone of the game changed after the break however, with the Bruins finding open space and generating chances more easily. The squad recorded eight shots on goal in the second half, more than double the three they had in the first frame. It didn’t take long to break through as senior forward Andre Ochoa scored with his back heel off a low cross from redshirt junior forward Jose Contell in the 47th minute.

“I don’t think we did anything different in the second half than we did in the first,” said coach Ryan Jorden. “I think the work that we did in the first half, the work that we made UC Irvine do without the ball, I think there’s a cumulative effect on those things.”

From that point on, UCLA’s attackers continued to pressure – and score – against Irvine.

It took 10 minutes for the scoring to continue, with graduate student defender Owen Schwartz sending a long through ball that led to a goal for graduate student forward Jack Sarkos, the Bruins leading scorer.

Schwartz said he was confident his teammate, redshirt junior midfielder Tucker Lepley, who crossed the ball to Sarkos – would get to the ball when he sent it.

“I trust my guy to win that 1v1 over there every time, so kind of just picked my head up,” Schwartz said. “Tucker had space behind and just knew I had to lead him with the ball.”

But the Anteaters continued to apply pressure on the Bruins’ defense after they conceded their third goal.

Freshman goalkeeper Wyatt Nelson faced seven shots from Irvine on Saturday, keeping a clean sheet in his first game. Nelson had not played in any of the teams’ previous six games, remaining on the bench behind sophomore Sam Joseph. Nelson was given the nod, however, following the four goals conceded by Joseph in the loss to Fullerton.

Jorden said Nelson was ready for his first starting opportunity.

“We have a very, very good goalkeeping crew and felt like it was the right time for Wyatt to play tonight,” Jorden said.” And obviously pitched a shutout and made a couple of really important saves, and we felt like it worked out the way we wanted it to.”

Graduate student midfielder Sean Karani capped off the Bruins’ scoring in the 88th minute, contorting his body to sneak the ball just inside the post for his first goal of the season.

UCLA now turns to hosting No. 8 Stanford to kick off Pac-12 play Thursday.

“I cannot wait. The whole team can’t wait,” Karani said. “These are big games you wait for, you play for and show you how good the team is really.”