Backs To the Wall: Bob Lilley and Riverhounds know ‘everything is win or go home’

With nine games to play and in a tough position, Hounds are treating every match as a playoff eliminator

When the final whistle blew at the conclusion of a rainy Saturday night game that saw the Riverhounds concede a final gasp equalizer to the Colorado Springs Switchbacks, dropping two crucial points at home, the drop in the atmosphere was palpable.

Despite being unbeaten in seven, with four wins and three draws – typically a run of performance that would have a coach smiling – Bob Lilley and his squad looked defeated with the final score reading 2-2, having scored a potential game-winner just minutes before. In particular, the three most recent games – all draws – sit harshly in the team’s mind, with two clean sheet performances left wanting without a goal and then the latest surrendered lead stinging particularly strong.

“The game was right about done with stoppage time, but it’s disappointing,” said Lilley. “You know, we make a block, a clearance, that effectively would’ve ended the game. We make the initial play on the throw-in, and we’ve got big guys back there with Pat [Hogan] and [Sean] Suber, but it’s a good ball to the back side. And not just at the back side, it was behind everyone. It was a good goal on their part, but we shouldn’t have been in that position, and at that point in the game it’s disappointing.”

“To give up the first goal was difficult,” Lilley continued. “We had to keep them at one, which we did, and the goal early in the second half was big. I wish we could’ve poured on the pressure at that point, but another 17, 18 minutes go off the clock where we did not look threatening, and I thought we left it too late. It was disappointing when there were only 5 minutes of stoppage time. But one you score the goal, you’re happier with 5 minutes than 8. But it was right on that border line, because we turned it over [after the restart] and the ref let them see that attack out. Had we cleared the ball, I think it’s over, so it’s a tough way to drop points.”

It’s a story all too-familiar to the Hounds, who’ve been as streaky as any side in the league in 2024. After seven winless to open the season, the Hounds found their feet with three straight wins to get back into contention. But that was thrown off-rails mid-season with another tough run of 10 matches without a win. Now, despite seven straight unbeaten with three wins, the Hounds find themselves still outside the playoff picture, with their chances to earn the necessary points dwindling.

“We’ve made mistakes at critical times this year,” he lamented. “We had to see that through with as much work as we had to do. When you let so many points go, the pressure to get three points every time is critical, and we’ve tied four of our last five games. And they were all winnable games. I’m not saying they were all clear wins, but we could be sitting in the mid-to-high 30s right now and we’d be in a playoff position. Obviously we still have work to do, it’s not over yet. I think you’ve got to get to 48 points, so now it’s can we win 6 of the last 9 games? And a couple of ties? Or we may have to win 7 games.”

“It’s not just catching these teams, it’s also North Carolina, Rhode Island, Loudoun, Detroit, Birmingham, they’re all in play,” he continued. “I don’t believe all of them will eclipse 48 points, but they’re all fighting for those points and these games for us are super critical to get three points. I look at the Loudoun game in Loudoun, Rhode Island here, two against Birmingham. You go 4-0 in those games because you’ve got to peg those teams and hope that you’re taking points from them as well as securing your three. Look, I’m proud of how the guys battled to get back into it. Disappointed at the end result. We’re all learning a lot of lessons this year, and hopefully it’ll serve us moving forward this year and in years to come. But we’re all learning – staff, players, and we have to show character at this moment and keep pushing – not lay down.”

Lilley wasn’t the only member of the Hounds to echo that sentiment. Goal-scorers Jackson Walti and Sean Suber both spoke with media after Saturday’s draw, each more lamenting the final result more than reveling in their own individual triumphs. Walti’s equalizer in the second half started the latter portions of Saturday’s match with a bang and a spark of hope. Despite leaving it until the very end of regulation, Suber would eventually find the Hounds’ second of the night and give the home side the lead heading into stoppage time.

But it wasn’t to be. On the very edge of stoppage time, a few seconds over the allotted five minutes, the Switchbacks struck back. A throw-in deep in the attacking third was taken short, and the ensuing ball played deep – beyond even the far post and over every towering Hounds defender. There, Delentz Pierre lurked, executing a brilliant header of his own beyond Eric Dick in net and into the far corner. The home crowd, having waited out a 30-minute rain delay to begin the game, saw their celebrations cut short and the mood collapsed into a despair that has become familiar in 2024.

“I’m obviously stoked on it. First goal in over a year, first pro goal – and I’m not typically a player who takes a lot of shots or has a lot of chances, so you know, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while,” Walti said of his screamer. “Kenny plays it to [Danny Griffin], he has a good chance at it and I just get lucky off the rebound. I take the shot, it tees up perfectly in front of me, so everything just lined itself up for me. I got a little bit lucky with the strike, but it happened at a good time. I just wish we could end the game with the win.”

“This game more than others for sure,” Walti said of the sting of the loss. “We put ourselves in a bit of a hole at the beginning this season. And like you said, these last 6-7 games have been a lot better, but we’re not in a position where ties are good enough to get us through the rest of the way. Especially on a night like tonight. In other games, we’re getting zero goals and keeping clean sheets in the back, we just need to find a way to get the ball across the line because we’re at a vital part of the season and just need points.”

“Yeah, it was probably one of the biggest roller coaster of emotions in my career,” said Walti of the final five minutes. “I think in that five minute span we got pretty low, all the way high again, and then all the way low again. But I do think it’s a performance we can build on. We scored goals for the first time in I think three weeks, or three matches, so we just have to switch it to another level and get some points on the board. There’s a lot of season left to play, so I think these last 6-7 weeks are still a good sign and we’re building in the right direction.”

Suber echoed his teammates sentiments, even more strongly so. He also dropped the mantra for the Hounds moving into this final quarter of the season, one his teammates will hopefully pick up, internalize, and live up to – every match is vital here on out, there can be no mistakes or missteps, everything is a playoff game now.

“Yeah, it’s heartbreaking for real. We’ve got 10 games left, we’ve got to win everything at home if we want to have a shot of playoffs,” Suber said. “To get the goal at the 90th minute is great, and we know we’ve got five minutes to seal the deal and they get a goal out of nothing. It’s heartbreak pretty much, all I can say.”

“It’s very disheartening,” he continued. “So many things could’ve gone differently in that last minute to prevent the goal. It just kind of sums up how the season has been going for us. The ball isn’t bouncing the way we want it, but how we don’t secure that win at home is just heartbreaking and discouraging to the team. But we’ve got to go out, we know we have nine games left. There’s still a chance to  make the playoffs. We’ve got to regroup and get back out on Monday and try to go again.”

“Yeah, 100%, we try to talk about it before every game that we don’t want to wait for them to score a goal to start the game,” Suber said of the early Switchbacks goal. “And I feel like that’s what we did today. Eventually we came back into it, but we’ve got to know that from that first whistle – especially now with just nine games left – that everything is a playoff game. If we want to make the playoffs, everything is win or go home at this point. And we’ve got to know the urgency in the first 5-10 minutes is what’s going to determine the game eventually. Obviously, we had a bad start to the game, we fixed it, but it’s not going to happen like that every time. So we’ve got to come out on the front foot every game from now on and just try to keep fighting.”

The Hounds will get their bounce-back opportunity next weekend, as they open up a two-game road stretch in Birmingham before traveling to Indianapolis. They’ll then close out their final seven games of the year with four at home – Rhoed Island, Birmingham again, Charleston, and El Paso – as well as three on the road – Tampa, Miami, and Loudoun.