Riverhounds Notebook: Road results have been poor this season

If there’s one area where the Riverhounds could make a splash and build confidence as a group in the homestretch of the season — it would be in earning results on the road.

The Hounds are currently in a stretch where they’re playing their second of a three-match road swing.

On Saturday, they head to St. Petersburg, FL, where they’ll take on the Tampa Bay Rowdies, a team that’s typically at the top of the conference but is struggling this season and recently made a coaching change (more on that below)

Having played Birmingham to a 1-1 draw last Saturday, the Hounds walked away from another road match where they left points on the table.

Riverhounds SC HC Bob Lilley: ‘Positive to get something’ from 1-1 draw, ‘But at this point, draws aren’t what we’re looking for.”

Still, sitting in fifth place in the conference, Pittsburgh can still make a move up in the standings, but they’re not going to do it at the current rate where they’ve been grossly underperforming on the road when it comes to results.

If this trend continues, with the Hounds in an uphill battle to earn a fourth-place spot in the standings and a home playoff match for only the second time this current decade, building confidence and results on the road will be essential to any kind of postseason run this team may aspire to have this season.

Road Woes

In fact, if you look at the 12-team Eastern Conference, the Riverhounds (7W-7L-7D, 28 points overall) have posted the worst road record (1W-5L-4D, 7 points with a goal differential of -5) this season, while in the 24-team Championship, they would be 22nd.

These results also don’t include Pittsburgh’s two setbacks in the Jägermeister Cup on the road (Detroit loss and playing Portland Hearts of Pine to draw, then losing in PKs) and an Open Cup loss at Philadelphia.

While it was a significant issue early in the season, the Hounds are still not scoring or generating enough goal scoring chances on the road.

In fact, in the ten league matches on the road, the Hounds have scored just five goals.  While Pittsburgh’s expected goals overall registers in at 1.27 (XG) per match, when away from home, that number dips to 0.

98 XG per match.

Last Saturday in Birmingham, despite having majority of the ball, Pittsburgh registered only one shot in the first half before they turned up pressure in the second half.   It was as if Birmingham said, we’ll let you have the ball, but we’re going to pack the box, and you’ll have to break us down.

“We were clear and didn’t take enough risks. Our outside back usually get around to the goal line, and that’s where we get a lot of our crosses from, but we weren’t getting that today. The ball’s (getting) in good areas, get it into the box, but we played back and played square too much.”

One silver lining could come from fact that forward Augi Williams added his now team leading fifth goal of the season, and his second on the road, last Saturday in a performance that showed why Lilley needed to keep him on the field for the entire match again.

“I thought Augi was busy with his runs all night. He made lots of runs and defended, and he helped us press when we needed to. I thought it was a good all-around performance from him, and it was good that he got the goal.”

Defensively, while the Hounds under Lilley have been a tough team to beat, they continue to be a team that is — by and large — are well organized and tough to break down on the road.  However, defensive lapses, such as goalkeeper Eric Dick inexplicitly letting a routine save slip through his hands, which happened last week, can’t continue to haunt the Hounds, as there’s little room for error when they’re playing on the road.

On Saturday, they’ll visit a venue that hasn’t been all that kind (2W-4L-1D overall), but they do have one of the club’s most recent wins there was pretty monumental — winning the USL Players Shield in 2023, in a showdown match between the league’s top teams that season.

Rowdies Still Trying To Figure Things Out Under New Coach

If there’s a team that the Hounds may be able to build some confidence against on the road, it could very well be against Tampa Bay, who despite making a coaching change, are now winless in their last three matches.

The Rowdies hired former Omaha Union Head Coach Dominic Casciato as the team’s new head coach, after firing Robbie Neilson in April after a poor start to the season.  Casciato officially took over for interim head coach Steve Coleman, in June, and there hasn’t been a quick fix that they were hoping for, despite having a mix of good young talent and veterans, especially it its attacking group.

Casciato earned USL League One Coach of the Year each of the past two seasons after leading Los Buhos to consecutive Players’ Shields and the 2024 League One title, Casciato has become one of the best-regarded managers in the lower divisions in the United States. After a half-season of underperformance – including a defense that is tied for second-most goals conceded in the Championship this season – the Rowdies will be hoping Casciato can help the side overhaul its six-point deficit to the postseason places in its final 16 games of the season.

Under Casciato, there’s been some replication of the 3-4-2-1 / 3-4-3 strategy that served Omaha well a season ago — maybe with a tweak here or there.

Woobens Pacius, the 24-year-old Canadian on loan from Nashville SC, leads Tampa Bay with seven goals, while Manuel Arteaga, the 31-year-old Venezuelan veteran has four goals of his own, including one in the Hounds’ 2-1 victory over the Rowdies back on June 21 at Highmark Stadium.

The key question could be whether the side employs a single-striker formation – rotating Manuel Arteaga and Woobens Pacius – to feature Ollie Bassett and Luis Álvarez in the dual No. 10 roles below them, or whether the side continues with its strike partnership pairing Arteaga and Pacius together.

Last week at Detroit, Arteaga started as the primary central forward, but Pacius and Charles Sharp were pushing out in the wide attacking spots.  The previous week, Arteaga came off the bench in the 74th minute, scoring an equalizer in a 1-1 draw vs Phoenix.

The Rowdies were shut out on the road in Detroit last week, with most of its promising chances coming later in the match.   Even as the Rowdies started to get on the front foot late in that match, a weather delay slowed down its attack.

“We were on top at the time when the delay happened,” said Casciato. “I think going out for that last 25 minutes or so, we were good and created a couple of chances. Maybe if one of those goes in we can get a second one, but it probably wasn’t enough and probably too little too late.”

With only ten matches left to play in the regular season, the Rowdies are sitting in a pretty deep hole that this organization is not used to being in and will be a desperate opponent.

After the Hounds beat Tampa Bay, 2-1, earlier this year, Lilley cautioned that this is a dangerous opponent. 

In fact, Pittsburgh caught a break to open the scoring in that match when former Riverhound, Thomas Vancaeyezeele, got crossed up by a Robbie Mertz corner attempt, when trying to clear the ball, turned into an own goal.

Injury Report

The Hounds have the same two players who have been listed out once again: Illal Osumanu (hamstring) and Aiden O’Toole (knee).