On what he liked about tonight’s win:
“I really liked the adjustments that we made in-game within the first 20 minutes and that made a huge difference for our team. It opened up the game and allowed us to create some chances and also kept our opponent from building any kind of rhythm.”
On the own goal changing the game:
“I think it started before that first goal when we were doing a better job in transition and doing a better job in our press. We turned them over in areas of the field where we wanted to turn them over in and we thought we could execute in. That led to that corner kick and us setting up that opportunity. I hadn’t seen either but I guess they were own goals? [Yes, the first and fourth goals were own goals] Huh, alright.”
On Kyle Smith’s goal:
“He’s done it several times both in training and in games where he comes inside and obviously we encourage it because he’s dangerous. Anytime you have an outside back who can go on an inside dribble and the opposing team doesn’t know what to do with that, we can take advantage and he used his pace. We caught them unbalanced and Kyle was excellent at taking advantage of that and then had an opening and produced a wonderful shot. That’s a huge goal for us.”
On the play of the three of Brian Ownby, Niall McCabe, and George Davis IV:
“It was good. We wanted all three of those guys to get involved in the attack and specifically, with Brian and George, part of our idea was to make sure that they were aggressive tonight going forward. I thought that especially George and Brian did that early. You look at the assist that Brian gets… he takes his guy 1v1 on the line, whips in a ball across and George had come inside because he clearly knew that Brian was about to put a ball into the box and it was a great finish. He still had work to do when the ball was still in the air but he got up, timed it perfectly, and obviously was accurate.”
On conceding the one goal:
“Obviously, it was tough to give up a goal and off our error in the midfield. They countered that and we knew they were a good counter team. Romario Williams is an excellent player and you can’t give him that kind of space.”
On the play of Tim Dobrowolski:
“I’m really happy for Tim. I thought he did really well. In the big picture, Tim came up huge a couple of times and managed things really well all night. He was solid and we’re happy for him.”
On the road unbeaten streak:
“We’re just trying to get better every game. That has been something that we’ve tried to emphasize so it doesn’t matter that we’ve had a harder time at home. The reality is that in a lot of those games, too, our focus has been getting better throughout the week. We’ve had a tough schedule and we have another tough week coming up but we have managed when we’re on the road to be super focused and that has been good for us.”
On clinching home-field advantage for at least one playoff game:
“That’s huge. Despite our road success, we know that to reach our ultimate goal we’ll have to go on the road, but to have a home game secured is important because it does allow us that little bit more preparation and we want to continue to push to make sure that happens. When you take care of your job, you can’t worry about anyone else but we got a little bit of help tonight and that’s what we needed. Now we just need to continue, with another away game in Toronto, we need to push and take care of what we can.”
