Riverhounds strike familiar tone through squandered chances, but extend unbeaten run to seven

If this match report sounds awful familiar to what you’ve read about the Riverhounds before over the course of the season, trust me, you’re not alone, as it feels like I’m typing out pretty much the same thing for the fourth time in the short spell I’ve been covering the team for DK Pittsburgh Sports. 

So with that disclaimer out of the way … the Riverhounds stretched their unbeaten run in the USL Championship to seven games as Edward Kizza’s goal was cancelled out in the second half to earn them a 1-1 draw with North Carolina FC at Highmark Stadium on Saturday night. 

The game started, as has been the case for most Riverhounds games this season, with Bob Lilley’s men on the front foot and creating a few chances, with Kenardo Forbes providing the final touches for both. The hosts were unable to capitalize on any of them. 

Their first chance came inside the first ten minutes, with all 5-foot-7 of Robbie Mertz getting on the end of a Junior Etou cross and knocking it down to Forbes on the edge of the box, but his shot was rather tame and was easily smothered by Antonio Carrerra in the North Carolina net. Just a few minutes later, Langston Blackstock did a great job of keeping the ball in play down the right flank, and did even better to cut inside and make space for a cross, which he placed perfectly across the face of goal to a sliding Forbes who couldn’t get the perfect connection on the ball and managed to sky his effort over the crossbar. 

Forbes, again, would have his effort thwarted just past the half-hour mark, but this time it was his own teammate that got in his way. Kizza intercepted his shot on goal and with his touch having taken the ball wide of the goalkeeper, he could have turned and fired an effort towards net, however decided to play the ball back into the box and for Etou to fire the ball across the face of goal before the visitors could clear the danger away. 

Right on the stroke of halftime, and through a bit of a stroke of luck, the Hounds finally managed to get themselves in front. Danny Griffin, who had been so industrious in the middle of the park, charged right through the North Carolina midfield, and in trying to feed the ball out wide, actually had the ball fall perfectly into the path of Blackstock after it took a deflection off a defender. Blackstock could have taken on the shot himself, but in an act of pure unselfishness, fed the ball out to his left to the onrushing Kizza to tap the ball into an empty net and give the Hounds the lead at the perfect time::

Speaking after the game, Blackstock explained that there was never really any doubt in his mind as to where the ball was going to go when he picked it up. 

“I just felt like he had a better look at it, so if I could give it to him with an open goal I feel like that was better than me," Blackstock said. "The goalkeeper was coming, I saw him and he blocked my path, I figured I’d lay it to Kizza after I’d seen him, so I figured it was the right play.” 

The confidence levels were clearly pretty high coming out of the halftime break because Griffin, continuing to run the show both offensively and defensively in midfield, spotted Carrera a good 18 yards or so off his line and from 40 yards out hit a shot that had the North Carolina goalkeeper scrambling back just in time to see the ball sail over the bar. 

In a tale as old as time though for the Hounds, if chances aren’t taken, then they run the risk of getting punished. Just before the hour mark they fell foul to that scenario once again, although admittedly through no fault of their own on the defensive side of the ball, with former Hound Louis Perez lifting the ball into the box above the head of Pat Hogan (no easy feat given he’s 6’4) and onto the head of Evan Conway who had jumped above Luke Biasi to loop his effort over the reach of Gabriel Perrotta and into the net:

It was just a perfectly placed cross and a great header from Conway to put it in the one place that Perrotta couldn’t get to. If you wanted to be ultra-critical, you could maybe say that Biasi could have got closer to make it more difficult. If you wanted to be even more ultra-critical, perhaps a taller goalkeeper like Eric Dick would have had a better chance to reach it. 

That message seemed to be echoed by Lilley after the game, as he put praise on Conway for his ability to get into the right spot and put the ball in the right place to find the back of the net, and whilst there was some pointers in the direction of Perrotta, he wasn’t completely apoplectic about it.

 “It’s a great ball, and the timing of that," Lilley said. "I thought Gabby took up a good starting spot but he got caught in a covering position rather than saying ‘it’s a header, I don’t want it to go over the top of me.' It was a perfect ball, the player’s running full speed, using the momentum of his run and his jump to get pretty good power and it takes the perfect arc."

That goal seemed to suck the life and momentum out of the Hounds, as barring a Hogan header from a corner right after conceding, they didn’t do anything to trouble the North Carolina goal as the game wound down towards the final 15 minutes. 

This was in stark contrast to the visitors who were not showing any signs of being happy with just a point, and very nearly came away with a late goal if not for Perrotta making a smart stop after Oalex Anderson twisted and turned inside the area before getting a shot away in what would end up being the final real chance of the game as the Hounds were left to ponder their squandered chances and the points that they dropped.

Whilst the USL, like the rest of American sports, is set up in such a way that you can somewhat afford to drop points early so long as you get hot for the playoffs, it is never enjoyable to drop points early in the season and lose footing that could still cost you at the end, which Lilley brought up in his post-match remarks.

"We have to do more than get one goal out of the dominance we had in the first half," Lilley said. "In the second half it was the complete opposite because they pushed the game, they got the goal back and stayed aggressive... We talked at halftime that we needed to get a second goal. That team has quality with their service and their players, they can match one pass with one run and the game could be level.

"We've got to be better. We had a lot of bright spots in the first half, but we've got to be more clinical. We wasted a lot of chances. I look at some of the chances we're missing, we've been doing that pretty regularly. I'm talking about shots inside the six-yard box that we're not finishing ... you don't get those goals back and you don't get those points back. Hopefully we'll keep working on it and we'll see results from that work."