Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC were one of the few teams Hartford Athletic couldn’t solve this season.
It turned out the rest of the league couldn’t figure them out come playoff time, either.
Pittsburgh won a dramatic penalty shootout over FC Tulsa on Saturday, 5-3, to take home the USL Championship title. It capped off a scarcely-believable run of six straight matches and more than 632 minutes of game time– you read that right– without giving up a goal.
Riverhounds SC hadn’t allowed an opponent to score since an Oct. 11 match against Indy Eleven. They went the final two games of the regular season and all four playoff games without conceding. Pittsburgh, which entered the playoffs as a No. 4 seed in the East, won three of its playoff games in shootouts after playing to scoreless draws over 120-plus minutes, including a first-round matchup with Hartford on Nov. 1.
Beto Ydrac scored the decisive goal for Pittsburgh in the fifth round of the shootout against Tulsa on Saturday in Oklahoma. Goalkeeper Eric Dick made two huge saves in the shootout to earn the win.
It’s the first league title in history for Pittsburgh, which has been competing in the USL since 1999.