• Preview
• Recap
• Bleachers
• Game Tracker

Houston visits Colorado aiming to end poor run

Jul 1, 2011 - 3:44 PM Commerce City, CO (Sports Network) - The Houston Dynamo rolls into Dick's Sporting Goods Park on Sunday to face the Colorado Rapids with Houston positioned in fourth place in the Eastern Conference.

On the surface the fact that the Dynamo is just seven points behind the conference-leading Philadelphia Union is a good thing, but coach Dominic Kinnear needs to find a way to help his team snap a streak of just one win from its last 10 games.

The return to action of striker Brian Ching will help, with Ching making his first start for Houston since April 2 in the last match, and he made his impact felt by scoring a late equalizer in a 2-2 draw with D.C. United.

Houston had its share of chances against United, with Danny Cruz hitting both the crossbar and post in the second half, and Dynamo midfielder Brad Davis felt that his team was good enough to claim all three points from the match.

"Obviously [I'm] a little happy that we came away with the point, but I thought we played good enough to win the game," said Davis, who left the match with a groin injury at halftime. "I thought we created a lot of chances and got a lot of balls in the box in dangerous areas. We were just unable to capitalize."

The Colorado Rapids enter the contest looking to snap a two-game losing skid, which comes after an eight-match unbeaten run by the club.

Conor Casey put the Rapids ahead five minutes into the last contest against the Columbus Crew, but he was sent off later in the first half and Colorado yielded four unanswered goals en route to a 4-1 defeat.

"Everybody sees the mistakes that we make and, like I said, you're going to get punished for those mistakes and we did tonight," Rapids defender Drew Moor said after the Columbus match. "You want to put it behind you but you also want it to teach you a lesson. I think by the time it went 3-1, you're asking yourself a lot of questions, and 4-1 was a little bit of a dagger."

Not only did Casey's red card reduce Colorado to 10 men for over 60 minutes against the Crew, but it also rules him out of Sunday's match through suspension.