A day after the Jayhawks’ pigskin players dropped their season opener to Northwestern, the KU soccer team took care of Evansville, 2-0, Sunday in a game that was moved to Memorial Stadium due to the heavy rain.

“Every game is a real game,” senior defender Lacey Woolf said of Sunday’s atmosphere, which had more of a feel of an exhibition game than the Jayhawks’ second game of the season.

The start was delayed nearly half an hour because the goals had to be moved from SuperTarget Field after it was deemed unplayable. The football field, which is regulation length for soccer but about 20 yards shorter in width, was marked off with cones and makeshift markers.

Yet none of those factors seemed to slow a Jayhawk team that allowed the Purple Aces only one shot all afternoon.

Jared Soares/Journal-World Photo

“What we took from the beginning of the game on Friday was that we played in spurts during that game,” KU coach Mark Francis said of KU’s 4-1 victory Friday over Northwestern. “There were periods in the game we played well, periods in the game that we didn’t play well. Today our focus was try to be more consistent with our level of play, and I really thought we did well for 90 minutes today.”

As was the case in Friday’s season-opener against the Wildcats, the Jayhawks’ Caroline Smith took care of the scoring with two more goals — giving her a total of five goals already this season.

The standout sophomore from Edina, Minn., just missed out on her second straight hat trick

Smith’s flashiest play Sunday came on a near assist.

Late in the second half, Smith received a pass deep in Evansville territory with a handful of Aces around her. After a quick dribble she flipped the ball between her legs to junior Lauren Williams, who just missed on a strike toward the left side of the goal.

Jared Soares/Journal-World Photo

Francis said such unselfish play from Smith — who took a nifty pass from junior midfielder Gabriela Quiggle in the 26th minute for KU’s first goal, and followed that with a bouncing ball from Jayhawk goalkeeper Meghan Miller in the 77th minute for her second score — is a big reason Smith is a more complete player this season.

“The thing I think I’ve noticed about Caroline this year from last year was that she didn’t get many assists last year,” Francis said of Smith, who, with one more goal, will tie KU’s career mark of 18.

“She’s creating a lot of chances for herself and a lot of other players.”

While Evansville had few opportunities Sunday, Kansas had a whopping 27 shots, and not all of those came from Smith.

Sophomore Jessica Smith had a couple of chances, junior Amy Geha had two shots bounce off Evansville’s crossbar in the second half, and sophomore Kim Karfonta missed wide.

Last year Kansas also had weather problems when it came to playing Evansville.

“We think Evansville brings the rain,” a joking Woolf said of last year’s 2-0 KU victory on a rain-soaked field in Evansville, Ind. “Last year it was a big mud pit there, and we thought it would be the same thing here. We moved the game to the stadium, but we still got them in the rain.”

Kansas senior defender Maggie Mason said while Sunday’s sequence of events was quite surprising, the bottom line was that the Jayhawks swept a season-opening weekend at home for the first time heading into next weekend’s games against Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Friday at 4 p.m.) and Wisconsin (Sunday at 1 p.m.).

“It definitely wasn’t what I expected it to be,” Mason said of KU’s first homestand. “But we got out of here with the two wins and can get ready for next weekend.”