Playing their earliest game of the season with a 10:30 a.m. start time, you couldn’t really blame the Sacramento State women’s soccer team if they started off slow in Sunday’s game against the University of North Dakota.

Sac State (6-10-0, 4-4-0 in the Big Sky Conference), however, didn’t use the early start as an excuse, as they jumped to a 1-0 lead early, en route to a 2-0 win against North Dakota (4-9-2, 2-4-1 in Big Sky) at Hornet Field.

Sac State junior forward Adaurie Dayak, who score the first goal of the game seven minutes in, was happy to get the team’s offense going early.

“To get started with an early goal felt great,” Dayak said. “It was important to get the early lead.”

The score was Dayak’s team-leading fifth goal on the season.

Sac State controlled the game for a majority of the first half, keeping North Dakota to only two shots. Sac State, which average 14 shots a game, had 16 in the first half.

Sac State coach Randy Dedini felt the offense could’ve been better despite the high shot total.

“Offensively, we’d have liked to finish a few more of those shots to make it easy on ourselves,” Dedini said.

The first half was also aggressive, with North Dakota committing eight fouls. One of those fouls resulted in an injury to Sac State’s Caitlin Prothe. In the 23rd minute, North Dakota forward Katie Moller tripped up Prothe, who fell to the ground in pain.

She was escorted off the field by the Sac State athletic training staff and was seen at the end of the game in crutches. The full extent of her injury was unknown as of the end of the game.

In the second half, Sac State wasted no time getting back on offense, keeping North Dakota on its heels. In the 73rd minute, Sac State redshirt junior Alyssa Anderson, who came in for Kayla Collins, took a short cross from Sofia Chandler and made a sliding goal to put the Hornets up 2-0.

Anderson was ecstatic after scoring the goal but was more excited about the team’s offensive production.

“We were just hungry,” Anderson said. “We knew that we needed to win this game.”

Anderson’s second goal of the season proved to be all the Hornets needed to keep the game in their favor. The Hornets continued to keep North Dakota off the scoreboard for the remainder of the game.

With the win, Sac State won its fourth conference game. Depending on the results of Sunday’s Montana and Weber State match (both teams are ahead of Sac State in the standings), the Hornets could jump to fifth in the standings. With two games left in the the season, Sac State needs some help in order to qualify for the Big Sky Tournament.

“We still have our destiny in our own hands,” Dedini said. “If we win the last two games, we’re in.”