Can you say wonderful? How about awesome, amazing, superb? The fourth place Quakes played like a dream today, with the first place Wiz hardly having a chance the whole game. We were aggressive, dominating all over the pitch. K.C. didn’t want to place defense all night but was forced to as we created chance after chance (we outshot them 15-4 in the final analysis). Onstad only had to make one save all night, at the end of the game, while K.C.’s keeper, Bo, made a number of saves, a couple of them quite spectacular. The most impressive was a tip-over of a cracking volley by Brian Ching in the first half. San Jose opened the scoring on a great end-line run by Dwayne DeRosario. Somehow his shot/cross ended up in the goal from an impossible angle. Supposedly there was a slight deflection from the K.C. defender, but I couldn’t really see it on the replay. If there was it, it was so slight I’m not sure it would have made that much of a difference. I think it was just a great goal. DeRo had a fantastic chance for a second moments later when he was one-on-one with the K.C. keeper, but Bo tipped the ball off the post and the Wizards were able to scramble the ball away. In the second half, San Jose came out blazing with more of the same: solid defense and aggressive tackling, quick passing, and more goal chances. The second goal came on a corner — San Jose’s ninth! — when Goose’s curling ball found Waibel on the far post to thigh the ball into the net. What an important goal! In this first playoff round it’s total goals in two games that win, so taking a two goal lead to Kansas City is huge. K.C. will have to beat us by three goals to advance to the Conference Final. I’m sure our players are supremely confident they can do that. It won’t be easy as K.C. will be desperate to score, but if they push forward too much we’ll have opportunities to score ourselves, and with our speed I think we’ll do it. That game is next weekend with the Conference Final (against the winner of the L.A.-Colorado series) the weekend after that. Awesome game, great play, dream result. Final: 2-0 Earthquakes.
