BY RICK NELSON
Of The Post and Courier Staff
RIVERHOUNDS 3, BATTERY 1
Two days after shooting themselves in the foot, the Charleston Battery got the boot Saturday in the first round of the A-League playoffs.
The Battery misfired on several scoring chances and never seemed to recover from the Pittsburgh Riverhounds' opening goal in a 3-1 loss before 2,606 at Blackbaud Stadium.
"It's disappointing to end the season like that," Charleston coach Alan Dicks said. "We couldn't hit the target."
Pittsburgh, the lowest-seeded team in the playoffs at No. 12 and the only club with a losing record, moves on to the quarterfinals against the fourth-seeded Rochester (N.Y.) Raging Rhinos.
"We've been playing a lot better on the road lately," Riverhounds coach Kai Haaskivi said. "We thought we were better than our regular-season record showed, and we were hoping to make the playoffs so we could show it."
Pittsburgh won the two-game, aggregate-goals series by a 5-2 margin despite entering the playoffs as the A-League's lowest-scoring team. After struggling much of the season, the Riverhounds have outscored their last five road opponents by a 19-5 margin.
Scoring goals was fifth-seeded Charleston's strength-the Battery finished second in that category to the San Diego Flash - but it struggled down the stretch, getting shut out in three of its last five matches entering the playoffs. The Battery again failed to finish its opportunities Saturday.
"They missed some of them by just a hair, but that happens sometimes when you're pressing in a do-or-die situation," Haaskivi said. "We've been there ourselves."
The Riverhounds took less than three minutes to apply the pressure by getting on the scoreboard first. Midfielder Garry DePalma outran a Battery defender along the right sideline and, going one-on-one with goalkeeper Dusty Hudock, blasted a vertical shot into the left side of the net from just outside the box.
The score effectively gave the Riverhounds a two-goal lead because they had won the first match of the series, 2-1, Thursday in Pittsburgh. That match turned after Charleston midfielder John Ball was ejected from the game, forcing the Battery to play a man down in a situation Dicks described as shooting themselves in the foot.
Pittsburgh didn't need a man advantage Saturday as that first goal seemed to take the wind out of the Battery.
"It deflated us, and we never were able to pick ourselves back up after that," Dicks said.
The Battery did even the match at 1-1 midway through the first half on a circus-like kick by Mac Cozier. The forward took a pass from Gilbert Jean-Baptiste, wheeled around on the ball while battling four defenders in front of the net and rocketed the ball past diving goalkeeper Randy Dedini.
After the Battery misfired on a scoring chance in the closing minutes, the Riverhounds quickly worked the ball down the field and Henry Guttierez threaded a pass to Paul Daugherty. The midfielder, who played part of the season in Charleston last year, easily beat Hudock in the 45th minute to give Pittsburgh a 2-1 halftime lead.
The Riverhounds built a 3-1 margin in the 53rd minute when Hudock got caught on the far right side of the net, and midfielder John Jones got the ball alone in the box and simply punched it into the net.
Charleston missed more scoring chances in the second half, including one in the 59th minute when Velko Iotov took the ball in midair in the box but was too high with his kick.
* The Battery collected $1,253 for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and will match that amount. The team also will donate its proceeds from the match to the victims' fund.
