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Ching powers Dynamo past Red Bulls

Jun 1, 2008 - 4:14 AM HOUSTON (Ticker) -- Brian Ching scored in the 68th minute and Tony Caig had three saves as the Houston Dynamo recorded their third win in their last five matches with a 1-0 triumph over the New York Red Bulls on Saturday at Robertson Stadium.

Ching accepted a feed from Geoff Cameron in the upper right box and kicked it past Red Bulls goalkeeper Jon Conway for the game's only tally.

New York (3-3-3) attempted to knot the score in the 89th minute, but Danleigh Borman's shot from the left box sailed wide left. In the 93rd minute, Chris Leitch's header in the box went high.

Houston (3-3-5) improved to 3-1-2 in its last six games and moved into a tie with the Los Angeles Galaxy (4-4-2) atop the Western Conference standings - a fact not lost on Ching.

"It was a huge win if you look at where it puts us in the standings," he said. "It puts us up in first place and that is where we want to be."

"A win is a win. We created some chances and I don't think they created much," Dynamo coach Dominic Kinnear said. "It was a hard fought, physical game. I think we knew after the result that they got last week that they were going to come with a different mentality, and they did. We got a good effort from a lot of our guys, and I think we should be happy with the three points that we got."

Despite the setback, New York coach Juan Carlos Osorio remained positive with his team's progress.

"We always know that Houston is very effective and very dangerous on set plays and that was the decisive point in the match," Osorio said. "I think we need to keep working, we need to keep improving.

"Credit to them, not too many chances between both teams and when they had one, they put it away and that's how they won the game."

The Dynamo were playing without goalkeeper Pat Onstad and midfielder Dwayne De Rosario, who were both playing for Canada in its friendly against Brazil.

New York played without forward Juan Pablo Angel, who was ill and didn't make the trip to Houston.

The Red Bulls lost one more player in the 44th minute when midfielder Luke Sassano suffered a left toe injury.

New York had a chance to take the lead in the 17th minute when Jozy Altidore got a bloop pass into the left box from Seth Stammler, but his shot was stopped by Caig.

"The effort was there tonight," Altidore said. "I thought we played to the end, but it was a night like this that's tough. Houston's very good defensively so it was tough for us to create chances, but we did have a couple of pretty good looks."

Conway made two saves for the Red Bulls.