Riverhounds extend winless run with tough home loss

The anatomy of the latest Pittsburgh Riverhounds loss was similar to many on their current winless run that now has reached 11 in all competitions and 10 in the USL Championship.

How it ended, however, may have been the most brutal moment so far.

After a night of once again squandering chances to score, a defensive miscue in second half stoppage time by Sean Suber on an attempted pass back to keeper Eric Dick led to a goal Monterey Bay FC forward Ousseni Bouda and sent the Hounds to a 1-0 defeat at Highmark Stadium.

“I’d rather see (Suber) one-time the ball forward there, because that late in the game everything should be going forward,” Hounds coach Bob Lilley said. “I understand the concept of trying to bring the ball down and play it back, but at that time of the game the keeper is just going to knock it forward. I thought Sean otherwise had a pretty good game, but he under hit that pass.”

The Hounds (3-9-6) are 0-6-4 in their last 10 games in the league and haven’t won a match since May 4. They’ve gone six games without scoring a goal.

The goal for Monterey Bay (7-8-4) came 37 seconds into stoppage time.

The sequence started when Monterrey Bey keeper Carlos Herrera played a long clearance that Suber got to first. His attempted pass to Dick was mishit, which allowed a streaking Bouda to get to the ball first. Bouda chipped the ball past Dick, who was caught in no-man’s land.

After the match one-by-one teammates consoled Suber, who was distraught.

“The timing of the game made it even harder for him, but that is not the time to point fingers or blame one person because there were chances at the other end that we should have converted,” Hounds midfielder Robbie Mertz said. “That would have put us in an advantageous situation where Sean is not even thinking about trying to keep that ball. We’re leading the game, and he can just make the easy play. That’s what it comes down to is that it’s a team game. The blame doesn’t fall on anyone personally.”

The Hounds generated 18 shots, eight on target, but they’ve now had 573 minutes of gameplay, not including stoppage time, since the last time they’ve scored.

They had 10 corners to none for a Monterey Bay team that had eight players out because of injury, including starting keeper Antony Siaha.

“It’s belief … It’s confidence … It’s all of those things,” Lilley said about the goalless drought. “Last week we didn’t shoot in a lot of situations where tonight we shot, but if you have no angle or are off-balanced and backpedaling on a header you’re not going to beat the keeper. You have to be able to get a proper strike or find someone in a better position. We’re wasting a lot of set pieces that aren’t getting to dangerous areas. There’s a lot of areas where we could be better.”

Hounds captain Danny Griffin missed Saturday’s match with leg injury suffered in the last game at Las Vegas, which ended his 134 consecutive match streak in league games.

The Hounds carried the play most of the night and were on the right side of almost all the statistics.

They’ll look to break the streak next Saturday when they host Oakland Roots, the second of four consecutive home games in July.

“Overall we played reasonably well, but part of winning games is finishing chances and not making mistakes at the wrong time,” Lilley said. “We made a mistake on the goal, but we also were reckless with the ball in the second half. We lost the ball in some dangerous areas that could’ve cost us as well.”