The Pittsburgh Riverhounds confirmed that they would play at least one more Open Cup game this season as they defeated the Richmond Kickers 2 - 0 in front of 1,571 fans.
More importantly the game moves the Hounds into sole possession of third place in the Northeast Division, a good place to be considering the Rhino's are coming to town next Saturday. The combination of being in third place, securing a spot in the Open Cup, defeating a widely regarded team handily and stopping a penalty kick should only help the Hounds confidence.
Play started well for the home team - in the third minute a pass by Thiago Martins beat the goalie and defense of the Kickers but was also too much for an onrushing Corey Woolfolk to handle. In the seventh minute, a cheer erupted only to turn into a groan as everyone realized the Matt Chulis had hit the side of the net on a tough angle.
Richmond got a bit of luck in the eleventh minute when Thiago Martins took a cross off of Corey Woolfolk and beat defender Chris Brown, who was helpless all night, as well as Richmond's goalie Ronnie Pascale. His slow roller of a shot ended up being cleared off the line by a desperate Richmond defense that was literally tripping over themselves.
Two minutes later Richmond finally started to show signs of life by getting a shot off. Kevin Jeffrey receives credit for a good effort.
Pittsburgh quickly countered and again their two forwards, Woolfolk and Martins were in on the attack. The sustained pressure lead to a corner kick that almost lead to the first Hounds goal. Only a reaction save by Pascale stopped the driving header from Eric Ongao.
The Kickers second chance of the first half came in the 18th minute. A bit of confusion in an otherwise solid defense gave Kevin Jeffrey another chance on goal. His header however floated harmlessly up and over Randy Dedini's net.
Another chance for the Kickers came about two minutes later when Ihor Dotsenko was pulled down just outside the 18-yard box. The Kickers however wasted the resulting free kick and they wasted another opportunity in the 28th minute when they tried a short corner kick that was easily broken up by the Hounds defense.
That corner kick would cost the Kickers dearly as a Richmond turner over lead to a sixty yard run by Corey Woolfolk. As he raced downfield I noticed that two of the three Richmond defenders followed forward Thigo Martins, leaving Woolfolk with just one defender to beat. Defender Chris Brown got duped and Woolfolk buried the ball into the back of the net for an unassisted goal.
Richmond tried to tie the score in the 33rd minute off of a free kick but the wall blocked the initial shot, the second shot by David Testo was also blocked.
The first half ended with Richmond looking to be worse for ware and Pittsburgh looking like they were willing to wait and take advantage of mistakes and missed chances on Richmond's part.
Richmond poured the pressure on early in the second half and pressed for the early goal. Pittsburgh was lucky in the 46th minute not to get called for a handball in the box, but after the first minute or so of play in the second half the Riverhounds settled down and were able to control the tempo of the game.
Soon to be adopted as a native son, Thiago Martins ran under a long ball from hometown boy Justin Evans. Martins went one on one with Chris Fox up the middle and got outfoxed by Martins. He then placed the ball into the side netting. Scoring his sixth goal of the season in the 58th minute.
In an interesting coaching move Leigh Cowlishaw used all five of his substitutions at once. In the 73rd minute he replaced Defenders Chris Fox, Chris Brown and Khary Stockton as well as Forward Kevin Jeffrey and Midfielder Ihor Dotsenko with Forwards Rob Ukrop and Greg Simmonds, Midfielders Paul Lukics, and Mike Burke. Rounding out the substitutions was defender Ben Strawbridge.
It must have worked for they managed to get off three of Richmond's six shots in the second half. To bad they only had seventeen minutes to work at making the game respectable.
Richmond almost pulled within one during the dying minutes of the game when Greg Simmonds managed to get a shot off while lying on his back from 12 yards out. The shot dinged off the near post and was quickly cleared.
The final chance for Richmond came in the 90th minute of play. Joey Worthen, who entered the game for Pittsburgh in the 63rd minute, pulled down Mike Burke in the box. Randy Dedini came up big on the following penalty kick, taken by Paul Lekics, to earn his third shutout of the season.
Pittsburgh earned a spot in the US Open cup along with seven other A-league teams. The Hounds will probably face another USL team in the next round, which begins on or around July 16th. In the next round their will be eight teams from the A-league, two teams from MLS (DC United and the NY MetroStars) as well as six teams from the PSL/amateur ranks. The remaining eight MLS teams do not enter until the third round of play, scheduled to be played sometime around August 6th.
