Riverhounds stumble to disappointing draw with last-place New York Red Bulls II

Pittsburgh Riverhounds coach Bob Lilley opened his postgame press conference after Saturday’s 2-2 draw with last place New York Red Bulls II in which his team squandered a two-goal lead with a poignant sentence.

“It was one of the worst performances we’ve had in the four and a half years I’ve been here,” he said.

Lilley went on to speak passionately for nearly a half-hour about the disappointment of Saturday’s result, how the team has gotten away with similar performances at times this season and how the Riverhounds need to respond going forward with nine games remaining in the season if they want to reach their goals.

The draw coupled with last week’s loss to Memphis has put the Hounds (13-7-5) 11 points behind first-place Louisville City FC and no longer looking at the top of the USL Championship table, but fighting with Birmingham for fourth place and the right to host a first-round playoff match. New York (3-18-4) had a minus-34 goal differential coming into Saturday, the worst in the league.

Saturday’s match started well for the Hounds. Robbie Mertz, an Upper St. Clair grad, scored in the 21st minute and Mekeil Williams powered home a header in the 43rd minute to give the Riverhounds a 2-0 lead.

A minute after Williams’s goal, however, John Murphy scored for New York to cut the lead to one.

Wiki Carmona tied the game with a goal in the 57th minute and the score held true.

The Hounds had a couple of chances in added time to win it, most notably Alex Dixon hitting the post with a shot from inside the penalty area.

Lilley said his players were too content with playing long balls and not trying to pick apart the Red Bulls with passes like they did when they beat them 3-0 on the road last month.

“We have talented players on our team passing the ball to the other team, missing the target from close range … a lot of underperforming players,” Lilley said. “That goes on the players. That goes on the coaching staff. It was just a bad performance with a lot of selfish play. Not doing what we worked on practice to me is a problem.

“The game got ragged and it went 100 miles an hour in one direction and then 100 miles an hour in the other way. At no point did we show our quality. Our defending was poor on both goals and continues to let us down. If we play well, we score 10 goals tonight. There was that much space on the field.”

It was a frustrating sight coming off last week’s 2-0 lost to Memphis, but not the first time Lilley had seen this type of performance. Previously, similar performances were glazed over by a victory, but Saturday, it came to a head and it’s a moment that Lilley hopes can galvanize his team heading into the final stretch, which starts with a trip to play Atlanta United 2 next Saturday.

“Everyone wrote in the preseason how talented we were and I’ve said it on more than one occasion that we’ve underperformed as a team,” Lilley said. “That’s frustrating that we’re not growing from that. We’ve had the talks as a group. We all have to take responsibility. The staff, the players … we’re failing as a team on the field. I’m proud of the organization for doing their part and filling the stands and we’re not holding up our end of the bargain.

“It’s disappointing for everyone. We have to go back to work this week. We have to do our jobs. Tonight, we might as well have been the young, developmental team because we did not play like a professional outfit tonight in my opinion.”