Do You Believe In Miracles? Yes!

 

Yeah, I never saw that coming.  In one of the great Rapids regular season games of all-time the burgundy boys went into Sandy, Utah and ran the locals out of town.  Then they took our Cup back and came home.  Just a few of the historic stats from Saturday night:

• Biggest win in team history
• Sixth time the Rapids scored 5 goals in a match (plus the Montreal game last year where we scored 6)
• Second time the Rapids scored 5 goals on the road (5-4 win at RBNY in 2008)
• First time we ever led FSL by more than 2 at any point in a game
• First time we ever scored more than 3 against FSL
• First win at Rio Tinto Stadium
• First time two homegrown players scored in the same game (Vines and Bassett)

It was also FSL's worst home loss in its history.  Interestingly, both teams are now responsible for the other's worst home loss.  Along with the 3 points the 5 goals meant that the Rapids outscored FSL 6-4 over the two games and won the Rocky Mountain Cup.  Colorado also jumped up to a playoff spot on PPG.  I said that to maintain a playoff spot we needed 7 points out of the 6 Phase 1 games, and we currently have 6 with one game remaining.  So we're meeting the minimum expectation at this point and are now undefeated in the last 4 games.

Clearly with a win this big everyone did a great job so its hard to call out any one thing, but there are a few moments to highlight.  Sam Vines got his first career goal after Namli once again broke some ankles for his second assist of the night.  Jeremy Kelly slalomed through the FSL defense to set up Bassett's goal.  Braian Galvan had his first MLS goal and somehow didn't have a second, hitting the post from 5 feet when the goal was wide open.  Honestly when that happened I thought our RMC curse had gotten us again and we were going to give up a Cup winning goal in another heartbreaker instead of salting it away by going up an extra goal.  A really important note, the ages of the players that appeared on the scoresheet (goals or assists) were 19, 19, 21, 22, 26,  and 27.  Collen Warner's 13 minutes at age 32 was the only player over the age of 28 to see the field.  The kids are all right.

I wanted to give Lalas Abubakar a shout-out after being on him for some poor performances.  He was everywhere on defense on Saturday night, and more than once threw himself in front of shots to keep the shutout.  Because of his work, and the rest of the defense, Yarbrough only faced two shots on target, both easy saves.

Man of the Match:  Diego Rubio, obviously.  He became the first Rapid to score two goals in one game against FSL.  Doing it inside the first 10 minutes of the match was just the cherry on top.  But even after the second goal I don't think anyone really believed we were going to find the two more we needed to get the Cup, much less 3.