{"id":566,"date":"2016-09-15T01:05:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T05:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsoccer.com\/?p=566"},"modified":"2016-09-15T01:12:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T05:12:41","slug":"fc-cincinnati-still-searching-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2016\/09\/15\/fc-cincinnati-still-searching-draw\/","title":{"rendered":"FC Cincinnati Still Searching After Steel City Draw"},"content":{"rendered":"

FC Cincinnati<\/strong><\/a> continued an uncertain\u00a0run of form on Wednesday night when they played the Pittsburgh Riverhounds<\/strong><\/a> to a 0-0 stalemate\u00a0at Highmark Stadium<\/strong>. Because\u00a0Pittsburgh\u00a0entered\u00a0the match\u00a0in\u00a0last place in\u00a0USL’s Eastern Conference<\/strong>,\u00a0expectations were high in Cincinnati that their\u00a0playoff bound team would secure a postseason home game with this\u00a0result.<\/p>\n

The underdog\u00a0Riverhounds\u00a0<\/strong>had a couple of things going in their favor though. First, they had not yet been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs and therefore had reason to battle. Second, they had won their\u00a0last two home matches, including a 4-1 thumping of the\u00a0Wilmington Hammerheads<\/strong> in late August.<\/p>\n

FC Cincinnati head coach John Harkes<\/strong>\u00a0decided to rest some key players in\u00a0his starting 11 for the match. Changes to the lineup included a first start for\u00a0new forward\u00a0Casey Townsend<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong>who was just signed from\u00a0Wilmington\u00a0on September 8th.<\/p>\n

The first half was dominated by FC Cincinnati.\u00a0The Ohio club\u00a0passed and possessed the ball with confidence, and took the attack\u00a0to the\u00a0Riverhounds. Pittsburgh spent most of the first half in defense\u00a0and\u00a0struggled to\u00a0relieve pressure on their own goal. FC Cincinnati\u00a0<\/strong>created\u00a0chances to score, but lacked finishing quality in the final third and the half ended scoreless.<\/p>\n

Momentum shifted in the second half and the Riverhounds found a foothold in the match. Columbus Crew SC<\/strong><\/a> loanee Marshall Hollingsworth<\/strong> entered at the break\u00a0and helped to settle the Riverhounds midfield. Despite a resulting\u00a0increase in possession for the home team,\u00a0the best chance of the match fell to the visitors from Ohio.<\/p>\n

In the 67th minute, FC Cincinnati’s\u00a0Andrew Wiedeman<\/strong> and Sean Okoli<\/strong> combined on the right side of the box\u00a0and\u00a0found their way through two\u00a0layers\u00a0of Pittsburgh defenders. Okoli chipped the ball to an approaching Casey<\/strong>\u00a0Townsend<\/strong>\u00a0at the six yard box, who redirected Okoli’s\u00a0<\/strong>promising pass\u00a0off the crossbar. Townsend\u00a0was inches away from\u00a0securing three points and a high playoff seed for FC Cincinnati on his debut, but it was not meant to be.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the second half was nondescript. Both teams\u00a0struggled to retain possession and\u00a0create meaningful opportunities. The match ended in a 0-0 draw.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference, the Charlotte Independence <\/strong>also\u00a0played the Richmond Kickers<\/strong> to 0-0 draw, in another match with\u00a0playoff\u00a0seeding implications.<\/p>\n

In short, Wednesday was not a decisive night in terms of postseason positioning in the\u00a0USL’s Eastern Conference.<\/strong>\u00a0FC\u00a0Cincinnati remains in third place after the draw. The Riverhounds earn a point but remain near the bottom of the league. Harkes’\u00a0<\/strong>team will get their next chance to secure a top four seed on Saturday. They will face Orlando City B<\/strong> in Cincinnati, in a\u00a0highly\u00a0anticipated regular\u00a0season home finale.\u00a0There have\u00a0already been over 20,000 tickets sold<\/a> for that\u00a0match, and the crowd present will be cheering for the right to host one more record setting evening at Nippert Stadium.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Chris Cowger\/Pittsburgh Riverhounds.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a 0-0 draw with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds on Wednesday, FC Cincinnati still searches for a high playoff seed in the USL’s Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1653,"featured_media":599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,26],"tags":[190,232,52,113,192,288,286,188,61,287],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-usl","tag-andrew-wiedeman","tag-casey-townsend","tag-columbus-crew","tag-fc-cincinnati","tag-john-harkes","tag-marshall-hollingsworth","tag-pittsburgh-riverhounds","tag-sean-okoli","tag-usl","tag-wilmington-hammerheads"],"modified_by":"John Bava","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}