No. 16 USF (5-3-2, 3-1-2) fell 2-1 to Big East opponent DePaul (3-7-2, 2-4) on the road Wednesday. It was the Blue Demons’ first win this year against a ranked team and was only the second time DePaul has beaten the Bulls in 13 meetings. The game marks the first loss for USF in conference play this year.

“The records have nothing to do with (it),” coach George Kiefer said in defense of the Blue Demons’ upset. “You don’t really look at records coming into games, because really, what do they have to do with the actual match?”

Despite losing to DePaul, junior Rodrigo Hidalgo is not worried about the rest of the season.

“I’m not concerned at all,” Hidalgo said. “If you look at our team last year, we lost to Rutgers and we lost to Syracuse. The story is the same as this year. They were both too hot a team, now at the bottom of the table and beat us anyway.”

Hidalgo scored the only goal for the Bulls in the final minute of the game. The desperation goal was a quick shot taken by Hidalgo from passes by Jordan Seabrook and Sammy Castellanos. It was Hidalgo’s fourth goal of the season.

“(We) were fortunate to get the right plays at the right time,” Hidalgo said. “It didn’t help much, but any goal that we score is obviously a positive.”

The Bulls outshot the Blue Demons, but not by much. USF totaled 10 shots compared to DePaul’s nine.

“We didn’t do a good enough job breaking down numbers,” Kiefer said. “In our game, when you give up a goal and our team can shut the middle off, you got to figure out how to break it down by getting good flank play, and we didn’t do a good enough job doing that.”

Kiefer acknowledged DePaul’s defense seemed to slip later in the game, but the damage was already done.

“We needed to get balls wide, we needed to get outside backs forward, (and) we needed our wide guys to stay wide to open the game up,” Kiefer said. “And DePaul did come off of that, but it was a little too late.”

It was the first win for the Blue Demons since Sept. 8, when they faced Marquette. USF suffered its first loss since Sept. 3 when the Bulls traveled to Duke.