Preview: Riverhounds look to keep momentum going into postseason against fully recharged Charleston Battery

Despite having qualified for the playoffs for seven straight seasons, postseason soccer has been mostly cruel to the Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC during this stretch under the direction of ultra-successful Head Coach Bob Lilley, and throughout the club’s 25 year history.

This season, the Hounds are playing with house money as they enter the playoffs, if you consider they were nearly left for dead in early July, sitting 11th in a 12-team USL Championship Eastern Conference, seven points off the pace of the playoff line.

Yet, in the last 16 matches, Pittsburgh has pulled itself up, losing just one time, including a four match win streak to close the season strong, finishing in seventh place.

As a reward — if you want to call it that — they’ll face Charleston Battery, their long-time USL rivals, who they’ve faced 43 times dating back to 1999.

The 44th match between the clubs will only be the third postseason encounter  and the first since 2010.

In our latest episode of Sounding Off on Soccer Podcast, USL Championship Match analyst, Ricky Lopez-Espin said that this has all the ingredients to be the best match of the first round.  

Among the key storylines around this match-up includes the showdown between Pittsburgh’s league best defense, with goalkeeper Eric Dick earning the league’s Golden Glove award for the lowest goals against average, taking on one of the highest scoring teams in the league that boasts a player that has set the league record for goal in one season, Nick Markanich, who scored 28 times this season.

Pittsburgh captured the Old Guard Shield (contested between the two clubs since 2017) in the Regular Season thanks to an aggregate 2-0 advantage in two matches this year, first coming in a 0-0 deadlock played in Charleston in June, then the Hounds raced to a 2-0 win on October 12 at Highmark Stadium.

For all intents and purposes, those regular season matches get thrown out when the playoffs begin, as it’s a whole new season.

That’s the challenge for the two coaches who have been named as the USL Championship’s Coach of the Year in the previous two seasons, Hounds’ Bob Lilley and Battery’s Ben Perimann.  In some respects, they’re very similar and in other ways, they’re very different.  Lilley’s demanding approach has always brought results as a team always looking to dictate terms and strong defensive play.

Perimann has molded his team into clever attacking side that works to find seams through the lines, constantly keeping defenders on their toes with lots of movement off the ball and they’re equally tough defensively.

The 6:30 p.m. kickoff will be the first of four Eastern Conference Quarterfinals to begin, and the winner will advance to face the winner between Detroit City FC and the Tampa Bay Rowdies, who kick off at 7 p.m.

Charleston Battery: A Closer Look

The clubs just met a few weeks back, with the Hounds, playing for their playoff lives, while Charleston were without some key players, saw Pittsburgh jump out to an early 2-0 lead and hold on for the pivotal win.

In that match preview, we took a closer look at the Battery, who have followed up a remarkable run to the USL Cup Final last season, to boast the second best points total in the league this season.

The Battery did its part to keep pace with Louisville City throughout the first half of the season and early portions of the second half of the season, but ultimately, LouCityFC pulled away despite the series between the clubs being a split, with each team taking a win.

Since early October, the Battery have been dealing with playing in games that don’t mean anything, so come Saturday, they’ll have to find a way to ramp up the playoff intensity.  That shouldn’t be an issue as Head Coach Ben Perimann has seemed to click a lot of the right buttons in just two seasons in Charleston, helping lead the club to the USL Cup Final last season, while coming back this season with a high scoring club that is also very organized out of the back.

Much like in the first contest between the two teams, the Hounds focus on slowing down and bottling up Markanich, whose 28 goals are already a USL Championship record and has an innate ability to slice through tight spaces and find scoring chances at will.

In the second meeting between the two clubs, when the Hounds pulled away with a 2-0 victory, with its playoff spot secure, the Battery kept Markanich out of the lineup.

In fact, the youngster is also moving on from Charleston at the conclusion of the season, as there’s already an agreement with CD Castellón of the Segunda División (LaLiga 2) for the transfer of the forward to the Spanish club after the end of the 2024 USL Championship season and playoffs,

Far from a one-man show, MD Myers has 13 goals for the Battery, and their defense is among the league’s best with exactly 35 goals allowed in 34 matches, tying them for second in the Championship behind only the Hounds.

Match-Ups To Watch / Hounds Projected Lineup

The Hounds’ approach during their run of success to close the season has been to go for it as they’ll look to do what they’ve done well in this strong finish to the season — make first half scoring chances count.

Barring any injuries (which there are no players on the injury report), expect to see a similar lineup we’ve seen in the late stretch of the season, with winger/midfielder Junior Etou, who has started most of the season, back in the starting lineup after an injury in previous weeks that limited his services.

Good possession teams, like Charlston, though can be dangerous and can turn the tables on high press, which Pittsburgh will most certainly look to do at times.

In the first match at Charleston, when both teams were at full strength, though some players were different, Pittsburgh were the more dangerous team in the first half, forcing a number of saves, while the home side flipped the switch in the second half of that match which they owned the possession battle, but Pittsburgh proved frisky on the counter.

Hounds may have to take the same approach on Saturday, when they may once again concede possession, but master punishing their opponent enough to get the result.

“Our biggest mindset is we think we can beat anyone.  There are games that teams have more possession.  It’s not that we don’t want the possession. Sometimes you have to suffer, but you also have to make teams suffer,” Danny Griffin, Hounds midfielder and team captain, explained.

“You need to have the ball to get the chances.  You need to be dynamic in transition, which is where we’ve scored a number of goals we’ve scored this year.  Still, it’s going to be hard to win games with 30 percent possession.  We definitely need to have more of the ball at times.”

Hounds Goalkeeper Eric Dick has been stellar this season, but he’s been backed up by a stable group of center backs who have been solid all season long — and have continued to build better chemistry and have closed out matches much stronger in the final stretch of the season after some hiccups that have come in stoppage time moments in four different matches that led to the Hounds dropping points.

Pittsburgh’s attack has really added another dimension since the addition of Bertin Jacquesson on loan from Real Salt Lake.  Jacquesson and fellow former Pitt standout, Edward Kizza, have proved to be a dynamic pairing at the top of the attack along with Robbie Mertz (one goal and four assists in this hot stretch). Lilley tweaked the formation at times to make it look like the Hounds have been playing a 3-4-3, as Mertz has been the third wheel with Jacquesson and Kizza.

Kizza’s been the primary recipient of these improvements — now having scored in five straight matches, improving his goal scoring total to team leading 11 for the season.  The success in both in pressing and getting forward on counters, picking spaces to attack and much improved clinical finishing when opportunities come — have boosted Pittsburgh’s confidence in the final third, which is crucial to have this time of year.

The Hounds are in very good form right now, having been in playoff mode for more than a couple months now. Thus the opportunity is there to potentially catch a Battery side, who has not had to play with any urgency in a long while, off guard on their home turf.

John K’s Projected Starting Eleven 

• Eric Dick
• Luke Biasi
• Illal Osumanu
• Pat Hogan
• Sean Suber
• Junior Etou
• Jackson Walti
• Danny Griffin
• Robbie Mertz
• Edward Kizza
• Bertin Jacquesson

Bench options:

• GK – Jacob Randolph, Gabriel Perrotta
• D – Jake Kent-Loop, Pierre Cayet, Dani Rovira, Langston Blackstock
• MF – Aiden O’Toole, Bradley Sample, Nate Dragasich, Pablo Linzoain (USL Academy)
• F – Babacar Diene, Kazaiah Sterling, Emmanuel Johnson

PSN Pittsburgh Riverhounds Playoff Coverage This Week

https://pittsburghsoccernow.com/2024/10/31/sounding-off-on-soccer-podcast-previewing-riverhounds-battery-playoff-clash-with-usl-championship-analyst-ricky-lopez-espin/

Riverhounds Notebook: Despite many old friends being gone, USL’s Old Guard rivalry endures with new playoff chapter

Date, Time set for Riverhounds SC-Battery ‘Old Guard’ playoff clash

Match info

Eastern Conference Quarterfinals
#7 Riverhounds vs. #2 Charleston Battery

Date: Saturday, Nov. 2
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: Patriots Point Soccer Complex, Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Odds: Hounds +320 / Draw +240 / Charleston -130 (FanDuel)
TV: KDKA+
Streaming: ESPN+
Live statistics: USL Championship Match Center
Live updates: @RiverhoundsSC on X/Twitter
Match hashtags: #CHSvPIT and #HOUNDTAHN