LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kira Steinke provided instant offense while the defense was in it for the long haul.

On Saturday evening at Owsley B. Frazier Stadium, Steinke scored late in the first half and the Bellarmine University women's soccer team bottled up Tusculum in a 1-0 victory.

Sophomore midfielder Lauren Mackey collected an assist for Bellarmine (2-0), which defeated a Tusculum squad that was making its season debut. The Knights opened Thursday with a 1-0 victory over No. 21 Carson-Newman as they went undefeated against two challenging opponents from the South Atlantic Conference.

Carson-Newman was the 2017 national runner-up and is a four-time defending conference regular-season champion, while Tusculum (0-1) defeated both Carson-Newman and SAC Tournament champion Lincoln Memorial on the road during the 2018 regular season. The Knights posted two impressive shutouts.

"I thought that was a fantastic effort from our team tonight," Bellarmine Coach Chris Tinius said. "Tusculum has a good group and the physicality of that game in the second half was through the roof; to fight through that against a fresh team after the energy we expended on Thursday was awesome to see."

Particularly awesome was Bellarmine didn't allow Tusculum a single shot in the second half. The Knights racked up 11 shots after the intermission but couldn't quite build on Steinke's first-half goal.

"Our group defending so far has been excellent. We've been very committed to working on that side of the ball in every position and it has shown," Tinius said. "We have to keep working on decision-making around the goal box. We again created some very good opportunities — so it's not that we can't create — we have to do a better job of realizing the situations we've put ourselves in and how to maximize them."

Steinke entered in the 35th minute and scored a little over three minutes later. Mackey fed her a through ball and Steinke cut toward the top of the goal box and sent a shot over the outstretched arms of the Tusculum goalkeeper into the back of the net for a 1-0 lead.

"We knew we would need to go deeper on the bench tonight," Tinius said. "We had some kids that maybe didn't get 30 or 40 minutes but stepped in and played some key roles. Obviously Kira is one of those as the goal scorer, but in general we got a lift off the bench when we needed it."

Bellarmine finished with a 23-5 advantage in shots, including 8-1 on frame. Sophomore goalkeeper Elyssa Francis tallied her second straight shutout.

Bellarmine plays at 7 p.m. (ET) Tuesday at Cedarville.

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