Riverhounds yield late goal, settle for disappointing draw at home

For 89 minutes, it looked as if the Pittsburgh Riverhounds were going to secure three important points.

Instead, they were left with another disappointing home draw against a bottom-of-the-table team.

Milan Iloski scored in the 90th minute for Orange County for the tying goal in a 1-1 draw Saturday night at Highmark Stadium.

Iloski, the USL Championship’s leading scorer with 21, tapped in a cross by Erick Torres.

Torres ran down a long pass, beating two defenders, before successfully executing his pass.

“I can’t make an excuse for that (goal),” Hounds coach Bob Lilley said. “The players can’t make an excuse for it. We failed. We should be able to close that game out. There’s no reasonable explanation that I can give for it.”

Orange County (7-13-11) is in last place in the Western Conference. The Hounds (15-8-8) had an opportunity to pull into a third-place tie with Tampa Bay and Birmingham at 55 points, but with the draw they are two points behind in fifth place with three games remaining in the regular season.

If they tie Brimingham, the Hounds own the tiebreaker and will finish in fourth place and have a home playoff game. But now they’ll need help for that come to fruition.

Albert Dikwa scored in the fourth minute off an excellent pass from the midfield by Kenardo Forbes.

It was Dikwa’s 11th goal of the season.

“I ended up getting into good position, and King Kenny (Forbes) has good vision and he slid me the ball,” Dikwa said.

From there the Hounds held the majority of the possession but couldn’t find many dangerous moments toward the goal.

Lilley felt his team was too content with settling for long passes instead of using space to hold possession and build up an attack. He likened it to a run-and-gun transition game in basketball, when they should have been in a half-court game.

In the end, it bit them after what was otherwise a solid night on the back line.

“When you’re winning the game, you should be slowing it down,” Lilley said. “We all know that. When we discuss it with the guys, they’re going to know that. But they’re thinking we got to get the goal. Well, we didn’t get it, and now we’re in the last 10 minutes or five minutes. Let’s just be rock solid now. We’re an experienced team, so we should know better.”

The draw continued what has become an extended winless streak at Highmark Stadium. The Hounds haven’t won a game at home since a 1-0 victory over FC Tulsa on July 30. They are 0-1-4 in their last five home matches.

Next Saturday, the Hounds will host USL Championship leader San Antonio FC, which has scored seven more points than any other team in the league.

“Over the last couple of years, they are the team that has played the most direct and they are good at it,” Lilley said. “That’s why their record is good. It’s not easy to play against that when every ball is put into the danger area and every time you’re on the ball you’re going to be challenged. It almost forces you to play long. It’ll be harder to find space, so we’ll have to be much better next week.”