'Quakes aim to keep rolling against Rapids

Commerce City, CO (SportsNetwork.com) - The San Jose Earthquakes will shoot for their second win in a span of four days when the club travels to Dick's Sporting Goods Park to battle the Colorado Rapids.

San Jose was in action only a few days ago and came away with a 1-0 victory over the Houston Dynamo on Tuesday at BBVA Compass Stadium. The win snapped a brief two-game winless streak and sent the team into a tie for fourth place in the Western Conference.

Both teams traded quality scoring opportunities, including San Jose goalkeeper David Bingham's penalty kick save on Boniek Garcia in the 58th minute, but the lone tally came from Adam Jahn in the 54th minute when he got on the end of a free kick from Matias Perez Garcia and nodded it home.

"The penalty kick was a big one. It came minutes after our goal so it's a huge save by David [Bingham]," said 'Quakes head coach Dominic Kinnear. "After that we defended a little bit better. I think it woke us up a little bit defensively."

"It's massive for the team," remarked Jahn of his game-winner. "We needed a win really badly. It's a whole team effort. We dug down deep and got the result."

Colorado, meanwhile, will aim to break a string of three consecutive draws following a 1-1 stalemate against the defending champion Los Angeles Galaxy last week.

The Rapids struck in the final five minutes of play to open the scoring with a quick counter-attack when Michael Harrington sent a pass into space for Torres to chase. Torres beat two defenders to the ball, went in on goal alone and slid it past Galaxy goalkeeper Jaime Penedo with ease.

Los Angeles struggled to deal with Colorado's high-pressing system for much of the match and created little in the way of chances during the run of play, but Bruce Arena made one vital change, sending Gordon on as a substitute in the 72nd minute.

Arena's managerial decision paid almost immediate dividends as Gordon got on the end a Stefan Ishizaki corner kick in the 75th minute and nodded it down and into the bottom right corner of the net, past Rapids goalkeeper Clint Irwin.

"It is gut wrenching, to be fair. We spent a lot of time in preseason trying to make sure we are really organized and really hard to break down and we have been really good at that this year," said Rapids head coach Pablo Mastroeni. "To give up a goal on a set piece, I feel for the guys. They left everything out on the field.

"We traveled from New York in coach, in the back of the plane, to come here against this team and to put forth the type of effort we did and to let it go on a set piece, I hurt for the guys. Fantastic effort, fantastic mentality and fantastic willingness to not make excuses and to really come away with again another fantastic point on the road."

"I think we responded well after our goal, tried to take the sting out of the game. Then a set piece, it was just a set piece," added Rapids midfielder Nick LaBrocca. "I didn't get to see it, it is hard to see it. There was a lot of chaos going on. We are going to have to check it out and fix it."