Open Cup Or Bust!

With the loss on Saturday it feels like the season is a lost cause, as we discussed yesterday.  That leaves the U.S. Open Cup as the only achievable goal this season, and we should go all in on it.  We know that a win tomorrow night means we'll host tonight's LAFC-Galaxy winner in the quarterfinals, and the the Rapids have never hosted 3 Open Cup games in the same season.  It would also be our first quarterfinal since 2007 (And back then we only had to win one match to make it that far).  Lastly it would be our first victory over a MLS team in this competition since beating this same FSL team in 2006.

The Rapids haven't released an injury report for this one, so I'm not even going to try to predict a starting XI.  So far in the first two rounds we've seen a good mix of regular starters and younger backups starting.  Tomorrow ill be a good indicator of what we're prioritizing at this point.  A young lineup means that Fraser and/or Smith still sees value in the league campaign and is willing to write off the USOC, a veteran heavy lineup will indicate the opposite.  I hope we see the latter.

Obviously both teams are coming off the same game on Saturday, but Salt Lake did travel home and came back to Colorado rather than staying here so they have a bit of fatigue in their legs over that (its also the shortest road trip they have, so its not too bad).  Its hard to see a major turnaround from Saturday's result though, unless the Rapids decide they really want it, and FSL decides they don't

Prediction: 2-1 loss after Extra Time, goal by Lewis.  Hard to predict anything else based on the last three games by the Rapids.  Hopefully they surprise me.