A Point on the Road — Abby Smith's 300th and Eva Gaetino's 16 Minutes

Katie: Yeah, Ava's got she had a slight hamstring problem that she felt. I think it was precautionary that we took her off. I think it was the right thing to do to take her off and not gamble it. I think the signs are really, really positive in the sense of it just being a small issue that we can take care of.

Kate Hanson: Sixteen minutes. That is how long Denver had a full back line on Friday night. Sixteen minutes into a road game at San Diego, fourth place in this leagues, and Ava Gaetino grabbing the back of her leg and then coming off. A center back who'd started seventeen of nineteen games, gone. and you knew if you were watching the stream, you knew right away nobody pulls a center back in the sixteenth minute. Because they didn't like the shape. So that's the news and I wanted to give it to you first because I know it is the thing you most likely want. slight hamstring precautionary signs are really, really positive. I love that Nick is always so honest with us, that was Nick right after the end of the match. And I mean, I believe him, mostly, but slight hamstring is one of those phrases that means nothing, or it could mean three weeks. And there's no way to find out exactly what it means for Ava Gaetino until we see her in training this week before they hop on a plane and head out to Portland. I'm gonna be watching the availability report on Friday, so be sure that you are following the 5280 pitch socials to make sure that you know the latest on Ava's injury. and I want you all to understand what they actually lose when Ava Gaetino goes off. It's not just a body. KK and Ava have been the pairing basically all year. 17 starts out of 19. That is a partnership with reps in it. The kind where two center backs stop having to talk about who's covering and just do it. You break that up sixteen minutes into a road game, and everything behind the ball has to be renegotiated on the fly in an a allowed away stadium environment against a team that is fourth in the table. That's what we were all watching in the first half, and that's why the the game looked the way it did. But here's the thing that gets me about that sixteenth minute. Denver were already without Lindsay Heaps. On the road. At Snapdragon against a team that had not dropped a single home point all season. Sit with that. All year. Not one. And then our one of our starting center backs comes off. We went down one nothing. The first half was a bit of a mess, and it was very uncharacteristic of the Denver Summit. And Nick said so himself. I'll play it for you. And then they came in after the halftime break. And they got a point. One point, first home point, San Diego's given up all season. Welcome to fifty two eighty pitch. I'm Kate Hanson And And if this is your first time here, we talk all things Denver Summit all the time, every week, every Tuesday. And today we're gonna be talking about the draw at San Diego, which was good, and some of it was really good. I wanna talk a little bit about what wasn't, and I'm not softening any of the shot numbers because they're rough. Abby's 300th save and Portland, which is coming up fast on Saturday night, which I've got one number on Portland. that I think changes how you might feel about that game. So let's start with the point. Here's Nick on the results.

Katie: I think I'll probably sit in the middle on this one because I think at half time, although we they hadn't had real big chances, maybe the Ludmiller chance, but I think their biggest chances came from our giveaways, which was was frustrating. I think they they did disorganise a little bit. Gia Corley was coming outside into areas where we'd spoken about, but we just didn't deal with it. I think it's two points dropped in the evolution of the team. I think if you ask me in March next year, April next year, are we dropping two points here after that second half? I think I'd be really, really disappointed. If we can fix that going into September, we got a real chance of making the playoffs because I thought we had the best chances. Although didn't play so well in the game in the first half, I thought second half great reaction, showed fight, showed commitment, showed our real character. But we had the biggest chances in the game. So I think this is one that as we evolve as a team, we have to have the sort of Ruthlessness to execute and get three points on the road.

Kate Hanson: So Nick watched the game from six feet away. He's in all the trainings, he knows this game better than than I do. I was watching it from my laptop at home in Denver. He's the one who does this for a living, but I've listened to what Nick's answer was here a few times now, and I keep landing in the same place. What's he doing here? He's holding them to a standard that they haven't earned yet. On purpose. That is what you do in year one if you want year three to mean anything. But that's a coaching answer. I don't have to give you a coaching answer, so I'm gonna give you my answer on because what I saw was a 10th place expansion team walk into a fourth place teams building without Lindsay Heaps. And granted, we've only had a couple games with her, but we were really planning on her being the backbone. For a lot of these hard to compete games in the middle of the season here. And she's she wasn't there. We lost our start one of our starting center backs, Ava Gatina, win the sixteenth minute. We go down at halftime. and we left with a point from a club that haven't given up one at home all season. And that's I don't feel like that That is two points dropped. I feel like that is a point earned. in about the worst circumstances that you could possibly draw up. And okay, the table. The table is less fun. 24 points, 19 games, 6 wins, 6 draws, and 7 losses. 25 scored, 25 conceded. Dead even, which for a first year club is actually pretty good. We're still tenth. we're three back from eighth, one back from ninth, and both of those teams have a game in hand. so the gap's bigger than what you see when you pull up the table standings. We have eleven games left. Six draws and nineteen. That is the season right there, not the losses, the draws. Almost a third of this season has ended dead even. Three of the last six finished one-one. Now, I've heard People say that six draws is not great. I don't totally buy that. Six draws means six games that they didn't lose. Twenty-five conceded and nineteen. That's one point three a game. That is a real defense. Expansion teams don't usually have one of those in year one. So the problem isn't that they drew against San Diego. It's what happens in the 15 minutes where a draw could be a win. And that's the finishing. Not character. The character of this team nobody can hold a candle to. This team has goals for excellence. There's a standard of excellence in that locker room that you really don't typically see from year one or even year three teams. This team is showing up and wants to compete at a high level. The math though, eleven games, three points back, eighth's got a game in hand. So really you're chasing closer to six. But over 11 games, that's doable. That's two more wins than the team above you gets. And Denver just took four points out of six against the third and fourth place teams in this league, back to back. What doesn't survive is another run of those one one draws. So I'm happy taking the point, getting on the plane, coming back to Denver, training, fixing, and then going to Portland. And I mean let's let's give them credit because a lot went right and I don't want the shot numbers eating all of it. So let's start in the goal. Tenth minute, Melanie Barsenas gets a look, Abby saves it, and that's the 300th regular season save of her NWSL career. She's just the twelfth goalkeeper in the history of this league to get there. She finished with four saves on the night, so she has three hundred and two now. She's two away from eleventh all time, which means that she's probably going to be passing somebody on Saturday. And this wasn't just some quiet night where Abby backed into it. She had a lot facing her throughout the night. She had breakaways to deal with in the first half, and Denver honestly was coming apart. And she kept the team together. Going into the weekend, she's top four in the league with goals prevented, 6.6, and she led the entire NWSL in recoveries per 90 at 11.4. So that second one's the number that I'd hand anybody. Who's only looking at the save totals? Recoveries per ninety is a sweeper kept stat. it's often how she comes off her line and kills before it ever turns into a shot. So honestly, nobody in this league does it more than Abby. No one? And she's rocking it. Nick Cushing said a couple weeks ago that they started this season with two number one keepers on the roster with PPM and Abby. Now PPM we wishing her we are wishing her the best of luck at Crystal Palace. She is out on loan there. Abby's our number one. And I think that the locker room, when you hear the locker room and coaching staff talk about Abby, they all have one hundred and fifty percent confidence in her. Incredible human, incredible leader, incredible p professional. Love working with her. and then Nick even tied Abby to the standard. He said, if you want to be a willing team, you have to deliver at the highest level. And Abby is doing that. The pl like I said, the players love having Abby back in net And it allow it's allowing them to play a little bit freer as they're finding their footing, trying to generate more goals.

Katie: she's literally keeping us in the game and allowing us to still have the confidence to go forward and just keeping the score line what it is. Like the little goals that we have against. Like we could have way more without Abby and Goal, for sure. Yeah, I mean that's honestly just what Abby does. And so I'm glad that she was able to showcase again like everything that she's capable of. And and that's I mean, that's Abby right there. She's one of the best goalkeepers I've ever played with. And you honestly have confidence going into those moments, knowing that she's going to make a save and she's gonna change the trajectory the trajectory of the game and everything. So it just it gives the rest of the team a lot of energy and a lot of confidence to know that like it's not over even when it's you know, like just with the play. Like the play's not over because she's gonna she's gonna make something happen.

Kate Hanson: one of the best goalkeepers I've ever played with and that's from somebody who's been around this league for a while. Okay, so in the second half, we have to talk about the second half because the second half was a different team. Down one at the break, and Nick was very blunt about why we were disorganized, that's his word, and it showed up on the the screen if you were watching the game. We looked disorganized, we looked lost. the possession was grossly in their favor. So in the first half, San Diego had sixty one percent of the possession. Yes, sixty one. Compared to R thirty nine. They had four shots on target compared to R one. crushed it in accurate passes, eighty five percent i accurate passing. Now in the second half, it was a more of a 50-50 game. San Diego had 51% of the possession. Denver had 49. Expected goals, Denver was better than San Diego. We had 0.31 expected goals compared to San Diego's 0.13. Total shots for Denver Summit, seven touches in the opposition box, 12 big chances, three accurate passes, had 79%. So I mean, everything switched. in that second half for the Denver summit. And we saw a very early substitution, probably the earliest substitution from Nick Cushing that we've seen all season, which was a very stark contrast compared to what happened just a week prior against Utah when we saw Tosh Flint come in, but then that was really the only sub until the the ninetieth minute. Anyways, we saw two subs come in right after the break. So that was a very early substitution on Nick Cushing's part. We saw Natalie Means come off for MK and we saw Devin come off for Emma Reagan. What the Denver Summit wanted was a complete next moment mentality. We d just heard Nick talk about it last in last week's press conference. And so this was a fresh start. Let's start fresh for the second half and They wanted to come out and be more organized, better pressure on the ball, more together. And there was a real pride in it, pride in grabbing hold of a game that really had gotten away from them. It it gotten out of hand. So I want to look at what the second half produced because I just said a bunch of numbers, but there was 32 duels won. San Diego won 15. That is a 17 point dual gap in a game Denver spent mostly chasing. 14 tackles to six, 20 touches in San Diego's box. San Diego had 11 in Denver's. Denver outcreated the fourth place team in the fourth place team's stadium, holding 45% of the ball. Again, that first half crushed us statistically. But we came back that second half. They were more direct, more physical, and they got into dangerous spots nine more times than the home team did. Yaz, of course, finished with the highest rating on the field. Janine was second. Those two have found some magic together, and I don't want them to lose it anytime soon. Which but it brings me to the problem. Eleven shots, two on target. Two. Six went wide, three got blocked. Only 18% of what Denver hit made the goalkeeper work. San Diego took seven and put five on frame. Seventy-one percent. So there it is. Denver got into better spots more often, but they did less when they got there. So 20 box touches, three big chances, two shots on target, coming back to that same old tail as old as time, folks. The finishing problem, It's not new. And here's the season number. Fifty-four big chances created, seventeen converted, firty-one point five percent. before this game, thirty-one point four. After thirty one point five. It didn't move. nineteen games into a season, a number like that stops being a sample and really starts being a description. So Denver created 54 big chances. If they'd finish them at the rate that Portland finishes theirs, and you'll hear that number in a bit, Denver would have about twenty-eight goals from big chances instead of 17. That's 11 more goals across 19 games. 11 goals is the difference between 10th place and a playoff spot. And I'd argue that this is the difference between a Fun first season and a first season people talk about in five years. It's not the defense, it's not the midfield. It's eleven goals that nobody has been able to put away and I could sell you a better version of the one than the one that happened. Denver's expected goals were zero point five three. San Diego's were zero point five seven. Denver's season average is one point four nine. So this was a game where Denver made about a third of their normal attacking output. Honestly, both teams were bad. And I'm not gonna dress it up as as some heist where the numbers say two teams couldn't make anything happen. And the players know exactly what it is. Since the restart back in July, since the June break, Denver have scored eight goals, and only one of them did not involve Yasmin Ryan or Janine Sonas. One.

Katie: I think we just need a little bit more composure in the final third. We know as a team that we need more goals and we need to put these away to win games and that's what's kinda holding us back when we're in front of goal. We just don't really put it away as often as we need to. So I think just having a little bit more composure and confidence in these scenarios would help us going forward.

Kate Hanson: We need that composure in the final third. That is a diagnosis from inside the locker room. Nobody had to drag it out of them. And here's a number that I've been building to all episode. Janine has eight goals and four assists, twelve goal contributions and eighteen appearances. one thousand five hundred and fifty seven minutes. So that is a goal. Every hundred and ninety-five minutes. A goal contribution every hundred and thirty. Pretty awesome. She is a defender. And I want to sit on that because it's it's gotten normal around here. And it's it's not normal. Denver's leading scorer defends. That is her actual job. The thing that she gets evaluated on is stopping other people from scoring. And she's leading this club in goals. In an expansion year in a league that is deep. Folks, s I want you to appreciate our co captain, Janine Saunas. Go look at the other fifteen teams and try and find someone where the leading scorer is a defender. And you'll be 'cause you're gonna be looking for a while. Janine doesn't have eight goals because she's greedy. she has eight goals. One because she's really, really good, but because she keeps arriving in the box on set pieces and in transition and finding that nobody else is finishing it. So it's a great story. Love Janine Sonas. Go out, grab her jersey. Colorado native that you should be one hundred and ten percent supporting and following on socials, drinking her new coffee from her new coffee company. Drink the Janine Sonas Kool-Aid because she's rockin' it this year. But it's also a warning sign. And I love watching her play. But if she is still leading this team in goals in October, Denver won't be playing in November. Yasmeen Ryan is finding her stride, has five goals, three assists. The two of them together account for thirteen goals. And Denver have scored twenty five all season. So fifty two percent of this club's offense is coming from two players. and one of them's a defender. the last set of goals Seems like it's on repeat. Yas Janine, Yas Janine, Janine herself, Janine herself, Janine against the thorns, Natalie from Lindsay, Yas Janine, Janine again. Those two are finally clicking and in an expansion team that's really exciting. And Nick didn't laugh off the connection that these two have.

Katie: you know what, I'm sitting with you. I I I'm asking that question daily because I said to the group, right, without sort of judging us and comparing us to other teams, I think you look at a North Carolina team that they were better than us when they beat us, right? but I don't see a huge gap between us and them in the sense of like ability. What I do see is two players in their front line that are in the top three, four goal scorers in the in the league, which reflects in their league position. And I think, you know, w we're relying on the minute our left back and our right winger. And I think, you know, I've said before, if you're a number ten, if you're number nine, if you you know, you y to be in the top four, to be in the top six, you have to have high contributions and You know, we we are putting that demand and expectation on our players whilst trying to really, you know, help them and support them and challenge them. And I think for us, you know, it's very, very basic. Y y y if you contribute, it really helps the team in the league position. And we've we've got points on the road today, we've got points at home because Yaz and Janine are contributing now we need to really step on the gas and get it from others as well.

Kate Hanson: Nick compares this group to the NC Courage, a team that has beaten us, and he says he doesn't see a big gap in ability. And neither do I. What he sees in North Carolina's front line, who are top scorers in this league. And he says that is what shows up in the table. then he says Denver. are relying on their left back and their right winger. what I just spent the last ten minutes talking about here. that is a head coach naming his roster's central problem out loud. He's not spinning it, he's not deflecting. Nick Cushing is probably one of the most straightforward coaches I've ever had the honor of interviewing on a regular basis. He's just saying it. So which is it? Is it a roster that is struggling in the in the center or is it coaching? Because there are two ways to read that answer and they lead to completely different off seasons. A very short off season, mind you, because we finish up this season, middle of November, and then back in January we're at preseason because our first game is February eleventh for the twenty twenty seven season. I think that between those two reads, whether it's coaching or roster, well read one. Okay, so it's it's the personnel. Denver built a defense, a great defense. We got an elite goalkeeper, never really landed a striker, They went and got Lindsay Heaps. who is phenomenal on set pieces and can help generate scoring. But right now she's out. But we also have MK Tosh and Allie, who got the start against the wave, which I was I love seeing Allie play it. The again, I said this last week, but the energy it and the way that she plays on the field makes me excited every time she gives this team a spark, even when we don't have the ball. If it's in their end, I feel like, hey, That spark is out there trying to generate something and I feel like it helps lift the rest of the team. Anyways, they haven't produced at a playoff rate, MK Tosh and Alley. Neither has Olivia. But if that's the read, then Kurt Johnson is gonna be going shopping i this offseason and that February kickoff looks completely different. Or my other read on this is it's the structure. Denver get into the box more than Portland do. more than a lot of the top of the table teams. And they pass better than some of these top of the table teams. We have eighty three percent compared to again, Portland, just since I'm gonna be talking about them next. I have their numbers up, but they're at seventy seven point two. The Denver summit get in to good places. they're just not taking good shots once they once they get there. And if that's the read, the fix isn't going to be assigning. It's what they do in the final third. And that is on the coaching staff. and what do I think? I think it's both. I think Nick's answer told you that he thinks it's both too. He talked about demand and expectation and challenging players. That is the coaching half. He talked about North Carolina's front line. That's the roster half. So he wasn't really picking one thing as being the problem. He was describing the whole thing. And unfortunately, You can't fix a roster this much in August. You can change what a team does in the final third in August, and these final 11 games are going to be a referendum on whether this staff can find one more score inside the group that they've already got. Whether it's MK, Olivia, Tosh, Allie, somebody's gotta take it. Because the answer keeps being nobody. then every game left is just gonna be a coin flip on whether Janine gets on the end of a set piece. So up next, Saturday, Providence Park. Six forty five Denver time. We're not gonna have to stream it from computers and stuff this time, folks. We get to watch it on Ion. And it's the first time that Denver has ever played in Portland. And here's a number that I talked about earlier in the episode. I didn't forget. Portland have not lost a home regular season game in twelve straight games. Twelve games. Eight wins, four draws going back to September of last year. That is a club record. For a club with three NWSL championships, two shields, and a challenge cup. Hmm, in tw 2026 alone, they have six wins, three draws, zero losses, nine games, no defeats. So that's the environment that we're walking into. Portland shows up for the Thorns. They consistently fill that stadium twenty-five K, the Riveters, their supporter group, they get behind in goal. And a home team that hasn't lost in a stadium in eleven months. So It's gonna be tough, but let's look at the silver lining. They lost Olivia Moultrie on August eleventh. She's out with the ACL season ending injury list. She had five goals in sixteen games, and she was on pace for a career year. That was their engine, and now it's gone. But on Saturday, they went ahead and beat Orlando two to one anyway. So the way they did it is what I want you to understand about this Portland Thorns opponent. Portland took ten shots, four on target, their expected goals were low, like genuinely low. They did get Kaya Hanks back off of the season ending injury list just two days before the Orlando game. so Hanks hadn't played in a competitive match since june fifteenth of last year. She came on in the eighty-eighth minute, and eight minutes later she scored a goal to win the game for So Portland, they lost their best midfielder for the season and then immediately get a striker back who wins them the game and stoppage time. and honestly, that's the type of thing that will happen for good clubs. So what do Denver need to do in order to win? Who do they need to stop? Well Obviously, we gotta stop Colorado's own Sophia Wilson. She has nine goals this year. It's her first season back since maternity leave. She hit her 50th career NWSL regular season goal back in July. She is the ninth player in the history of this league to get there. Third to do it inside a hundred games. She's got a million dollar contract and she shows why she's worth every single penny. This is what I think is going to decide this game, this contrast, because Portland have created 47 big chances and they've converted 24. So they sit at 51.1% on converting those big chances. Denver have created 54%. and they've converted 17. 31.5%. So So Denver is creating more big chances, but Portland's capitalizing on those. And that can be the whole game right there and those two numbers. that is the eleven goals that I was talking about earlier. Nearly the same expected goals. Portland just knows how to put them in. Now, what's actually on the line on Saturday? If Denver get a result in Portland, They've beaten or drawn against the third, fourth, and fourth, because of table movement, place teams in a three week stretch. And they walk into the last ten games of the season with a real case that they belong in that playoff conversation. If they lose, they're still tenth, they're still chasing, and the two teams ahead of them still have a game in hand. So it's not a must win. There's no such thing in August. But it's the kind of game that tells you Which version of this team sh will be showing up in September? But, and this is the part that I hold on to, Denver has already beaten this team. Yes, back July 18th. Remember that Scorcher noon game, where we were all dying out at Centennial Stadium. Which again, props to the team. A lot of changes have happened since that game. But we won! Denver had 18 shots to Portland's 10. Thirty-eight touches in the box to eighteen. And we created five big chances. Granted, we missed all five. But we won anyway. So it's been done this season by this group. The difference is they did it at altitude in our building against the Portland side that had to come up here in the hot hot heat and breathe. Saturday is the reverse. It's sea level, their crowd, their record. So what do Denver actually need? Abbey needs to have another great game. Portland only put four on target against Orlando, and the read coming out of that city right now is that they're winning on finishing quality, not on control. And if that's true, Denver are going to get looks. But I want to see somebody other than Janine and Yaz score. I've said it three times this episode and I'll say it again on s the next episode if it doesn't happen because that is the whole thing. If Portland's plan is anything besides stop Janine and Yaz, well then they haven't watched the tape. And Denver has to be better in the first fifteen minutes than they were against San Diego. They went down early on the road, clawed their way back in Portland with that crowd, against a team that hasn't lost there in eleven months. You don't want to find out what that place sounds like at 2-0. And one more thing that I'm gonna be watching is the lineup. Nick's done a phenomenal job of keeping us on our toes every week with who will be in that starting lineup. Nick heavily rotated the lineup going into that Utah game. He stuck with it against San Diego. but then we saw very early substitutions in the second half at San Diego at San Diego. Now we have a center mid that's still dealing with a day to day knee injury, which again be sure to follow 5280 pitch on the socials for all of the news on injuries and who's going to be in or out. Who knows about Ava Gaetino? She might be out week to week, day to day. Who knows? We'll know more after trainings this week. but with her hamstring injury, I expect to see Meg Reed get the start against Portland. Because she just gave Nick Cushing seventy four very solid minutes on the road. Or does Gemma Bonner get a look? Is this the game where we see her take her first game in a Denver Summit uniform? My guess, like I said, is that he goes with the group that got him to this point. But the back line is genuinely the question of the week. I think that Allie Brazier gets another start. I think that Devin Lynch is back on the field again. I think that Natalie Means gets the the call up top again. If Lindsay Heaps is not able to play. I see Tosh getting the start over Yuna. So that's my lineup guess. My prediction on the game, I'm going with another draw. I am going with a two-two draw against Portland. I think that walking away with one against a very difficult Portland team in their own stadium is a win. And it keeps us in the playoff conversation. Now, if we were to win, that'd be amazing, but my prediction is a draw for this match. You know, Nick said something in the postgame press conference that about the team mentality going into this Portland game. And the whole thing came down to one word belief. He walked through it, they won at Louisville, Gotham, Houston, Drew at Seattle, He said they were under pressure in that first half, down one, and he told them at the break it was still half a game. that the best teams turn matches around and that whatever Portland throws at them, whether it's early or late, he wants his team to know that they can flip it. And you know, going into last weekend, Denver's road points against last season's playoff teams were the most in the NWSL. So whatever's wrong with this team, being scared to go out on the road, that's not on the list. Eleven games, three points out of eight, two teams above them with a game in hand. A defender that is leading the club in goals with eight, thirty-one point five percent conversion that hasn't moved in two months. now with two of our starters out with injury, and then a very tough game in Portland on Saturday. I have that belief too. I think that they can do this. Not because the numbers are kind, because they're not, but Because a team that goes to San Diego, loses a starter, goes down at halftime, and leaves with a point, that's not a team that's decided that the season is over. That's not a team that goes down and and gives up. Alright, that is the show for this week. Be sure to check out the socials, I'm very active on threads, Instagram, Facebook, that's the place you can find me the most. Or head to fifty two eighty pitch dot com, sign up for the newsletter, read the blog, and if you want to support the show, the best way that you can do it is by checking out our merch store. We've got awesome things like our best selling hat. It's got the sweet 5280 on the side. But check out the merch store. That's the best way to show your support. And you can look awesome on the Denver Summit sideline or whatever soccer sideline that you are on. Thank you so much for being here with me every week. Be sure to like the show, leave a review, do all the things because when you do that, It genuinely helps push the show out into the algorithm so more people can find the show and more people can become fans of women's soccer. So thank you to all of you who are here every single week Portland, Saturday, six forty five on Ion. I'll have the recap next week. We'll talk to you soon.