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Cummings helps Rapids beat United 3-0

Jun 21, 2009 - 5:35 AM COMMERCE CITY, Colorado (STATS) - With high-scoring Conor Casey unavailable, the Colorado Rapids used a sterling performance from Omar Cummings to take advantage of a tired D.C. United team.

Cummings scored twice and added an assist to help the Rapids extend their home unbeaten streak over United to nine with a 3-0 victory on Saturday night.

"He was world class today; nothing else to say than that," said midfielder Colin Clark who received a pass from Cummings to score Colorado's third goal.

When asked to describe Cummings' performance in one word, Rapids coach Gary Smith said, without blinking, "outstanding." But Ben Olsen jokingly asked who Cummings was.

"His performance was pretty good tonight, his pace gave us some trouble," said the United captain.

Casey, who's scored four goals of his eight goals in the last three games coming in, is with the United States at the Confederations Cup in South Africa. He wasn't missed.

In the 11th minute, Cummings took a pass from captain Pablo Mastroeni and ran past defender Greg Janicki before pausing in the box and curling the ball past Josh Wicks in the United goal.

Though United (5-2-8) trailed, Olsen and his teammates piled the pressure on. Forward Santino Quaranta's shot was pushed wide by Matt Pickens for a corner kick in the 18th minute. Olsen also had an opportunity shortly after that, but blasted it high over the post.

Cummings found the back of the net just before halftime from a near-impossible angle to give the Rapids a 2-0 lead.

"I think I made it a little bit more difficult for myself than I needed to, but I had confidence that once I get past the goalkeeper, I would put it in the back of the net," Cummings said.

The goal was the result of a bad back pass from United defender Avery John that put Cummings through for an opportunity to dribble past a helpless Wicks.

"I think it was a group effort from us tonight on being bad," said Olsen, whose team fell to 0-6-3 in their last nine trips to Colorado.

Though Colorado went into the half with a comfortable lead, Smith felt his team was not convincing enough on the ball.

"I thought we were disappointing with the ball, there were a lot of occasions where we squandered possessions easily, but the difference was Omar," Smith said.

Cummings, who paired with recently acquired Pat Noonan up front for Colorado (5-2-5), has five goals this season. Four minutes into the second half, Cummings dashed into the box and passed to Clark, who capped the scoring.

"I actually almost missed it," Clark said. "He did well to even look up with a defender right on his back to cut it across to me for the finish."

Pickens made three of his five saves in the second half for Colorado.

"You forget about those chances pretty easily, he did very well with those saves," Olsen said.

Eastern Conference-leading D.C., playing its third game in eight days, did not have Fred and Luciano Emilio who were hurt, and Jaime Moreno did not travel with the team.

Coach Tom Soehn and Olsen blamed their performance on the tight schedule.

"They (Colorado) had 10 days rest so I knew it was going to be difficult for us, because guys were tired" Soehn said.