A win just wasn't in the cards for the Mountain Lions Monday.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs was hit with three cards, two yellows and a red, over a 4:36 span, contributing to a disappointing 4-0 loss to the Palm Beach Atlantic Sailfish at Mountain Lion Stadium.

Early in the first half, Kyle Crouse of Palm Beach Atlantic (2-0) found Daniel Abrahamsohn with a crossing pass through the middle to score the first goal.

The flop went against UCCS as the team was assessed three cards late in the first half with the third being the most costly. The first yellow card was called on Isak Tengesdal at the 35:56 mark. Three minutes, 25 seconds later, Ryan Buttner was called with a second UCCS yellow card. Just over a minute after that, Dan Smith was hit with a red card.

That card forced the Mountain Lions (1-1) to play the rest of the game a man down.

"It's 1-0, it's a great game, the teams are pretty evenly matched," said UCCS coach Henry Ellis, "and then decisions made on the field that we can't control obviously change the game.

"I thought overall we absolutely battled."

The shorthanded Mountain Lions labored in the second half and were able to keep it 1-0 until UCCS took a chance and played goalie Adam Liszewski (1-1) higher up to help out on the offense. Palm Beach Atlantic's Cheyne Roberts, seeing the opportunity, was able to pass the ball through the defenders to Josh Sharpe who was able to kick it in the left corner of the net with less than nine minutes remaining.

"We tried to change as much as possible, we basically pushing everybody forward at the end even our goal keeper," said Ellis. "They got a quick counter put in the back of the net and that just completely deflated us."

That deflation cost the Mountain Lions two more goals in the final minutes.

A Jonathon Clark shot was blocked by the Mountain Lion defense, but Clark was able to get the rebound and find Chance Sumner open to score the third goal for Palm Beach with 2:62 remaining.

A crossing pass by Palm Beach's Daniel Dodge to Jonathon Clark turned into the fourth Sailfish goal with only five seconds remaining in the game.

"It's tough when you (give) one up like that, but we're either going to lose by one or lose by more, it doesn't really matter, we were trying to get that extra one in."

The Mountain Lions were able to outshoot Palm Beach 17-15 despite being a man down for a large portion of the game. Goalkeeper Joe Yurchak (2-0) made four saves to earn the win.

The young UCCS team gained a lot of experience against the veteran Palm Beach Atlantic who had a roster featuring 16 upper classman.

"The more games they get underneath their belts, the more experienced they're going to be, and the better nose they're going to have for the goal," said Ellis. "The whole goal is to be hitting our stride as soon as we start conference play and I think we're going to be able to be there just because they've already developed tremendously so far through preseason and these first two games."

UCCS only committed eight fouls while Palm Beach Atlantic committed 16.

"I can't ask for better work than what we put in," said Ellis. "It's always frustrating when you can't control some things, but when we only give up eight fouls total, a red and two yellows and they fouled us 16 times, it's hard to battle back from."