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Dynamo-Revolution Preview

May 2, 2009 - 3:46 PM By MATT BECKER STATS Senior Writer

Houston (1-2-2) at New England (2-1-2), 3:00 p.m. EDT

The New England Revolution's first loss of the season last week also ended up being the worst in franchise history.

Although it was an embarrassing defeat, the team believes it was also an important wake-up call.

The Revolution expect to have starting goalkeeper Matt Reis back in net as they look to bounce back from Sunday at home against the Houston Dynamo.

New England (2-1-2) wrapped up a stretch of playing four of its first five games on the road with last Saturday's 6-0 loss to Real Salt Lake. All the scores came in the second half, as the Revolution were outshot 29-6 - 12-2 on goal - in the game.

Despite suffering the most-lopsided regular-season defeat in its 14-year history, New England isn't sulking.

"All we can do is go up from here right? I mean, nobody has ever lost a championship in the sixth week," midfielder Jeff Larentowicz said.

Midfielder Wells Thompson added, "This might be one of the greatest things to happen to us this year to get our heads back on track and get focused on playing well and playing like a team."

The Revs now look to take advantage of playing four of their next six games at Gillette Stadium and the likelihood of having Reis back in net.

Reis, who is no longer listed on the injury report, hasn't played since New England's 1-0 season-opening win over San Jose due to inflammation in his right knee.

He went 11-11-6 with a 1.38 goals-against average in 28 games last season, and has been in net for all six of New England's regular season games against the Dynamo (1-2-2), going 3-0-3 with a 0.83 GAA.

Although New England has never lost to Houston in the regular season, the Dynamo beat the Revs in both the 2006 and '07 MLS Cup.

These teams haven't met since New England's 6-5 shootout win in last season's SuperLiga final.

The Dynamo are off to another sluggish start and are coming off a bye week, but will look to build on a 1-0 win over Colorado on April 19 - their first victory of the season.

Brian Ching scored on a header in the 20th minute to break a 254-minute scoreless drought for Houston, and Pat Onstad stopped a penalty kick late in the game to seal the victory.

Although the Dynamo have a track record of getting off to slow starts only to make a late playoff push, they still needed to get in the win column to avoid falling further in the standings.

"I think this win is huge," Ching told Houston's official Web site. "I think we needed it. We know we are a better team than our record indicates and we haven't been playing up to par. Hopefully, we build a bit of confidence off of this and go into the week off with our heads high and look forward to going to New England."

The Dynamo opened last season 0-2-4 before rebounding to win the Western Conference. In 2007, Houston started 2-5-1 but went on to capture its second straight MLS Cup.