With two head-to-head meetings remaining and a game in hand against the top team in the league, Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC still finds itself in the hunt for the No. 1 spot in the Eastern Conference.
But to catch FC Cincinnati (17-3-6), it will be no easy task. The Queen City squad has an 11-point advantage over the Black and Gold in the standings and reeled off 15 straight games without suffering a loss.
Pittsburgh (12-3-10) will try to change that this weekend, as it completes its two-game road trip at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at Nippert Stadium.
“Our goal is to finish in the top two, so we have a lot of work to do, a lot of points to get in these last 10 games,” assistant coach Mark Pulisic said before the road trip. “The guys know we’ve set our own goals. Making the playoffs obviously was a goal when we started the season, but now we feel like we have a quality team that can compete for a championship.”
Expected value, a predicted value determined by the sum of all possible values multiplied by the probability of occurrence, shows the Hounds are indeed on pace for a top-two finish in the Eastern Conference despite their current third-place ranking.
The expected value of a single USL match is 1.33 points, which would put Pittsburgh on pace for nearly 58 points to finish the season. With this analysis, it is also projected that the cutoff for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference would be 46 points, as of the start of September. Currently, the Hounds sit at 46 points in the standings, hinting they already have a playoff position in their hands, although nothing is officially or mathematically clinched as of yet.
“I think we’re starting to gel and mesh together into the team we want to be,” midfielder Ben Zemanski said. “You can see it in our performances and you can see that process in our work. I think it’s continuing that and finding a way to ultimately get results.”
Including Zemanski, Pittsburgh received at least two chances created from three different players last time out at Indy Eleven – a showdown that did not make for an easy result. Holding a man advantage for the last four minutes of play plus an additional six minutes of stoppage time, the Eleven ramped up their offensive pressure and placed three shots on target, including a goal, in second-half stoppage time.
Now after a draw at Indy on Wednesday, the Hounds yearn for at least one more point – if not three – to complete a grueling road trip against two projected playoff teams.
“We put pressure on ourselves to go out, not sit back and try to bring a point or two points home,” Pulisic said. “We want to go out and win. It’s going to be difficult, but that’s what you play for. You play for these types of challenges.”
