Sounders thriving with trip to Colorado on tap

The Seattle Sounders will try to continue their second-half surge on Saturday night when they visit the Colorado Rapids in Commerce City, Colo.

The Sounders' latest victory vaulted Seattle (15-9-8, 53 points) to third in the Western Conference with two matches to play and made it 11 wins in 15 league matches.

Rookie Georgi Minoungou scored the first goal of his MLS career and Paul Rothrock added his fifth of the season in a convincing 3-0 win at Vancouver on Wednesday night.

Albert Rusnak converted from the penalty spot for his ninth of the campaign to complete the dominant effort, albeit against a Vancouver side playing without key attacker Ryan Gauld due to injury.

"The team's confident. It's been confident for a while," Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer said. "Vancouver, look, they've had a tough stretch, Ryan Gauld wasn't playing. That doesn't take away from the three goals and the performance and the shutout, Georgi's first goal and some of the things that he did."

Sixth-place Colorado (15-12-5, 50 points) lost 3-1 at home to the West-leading Los Angeles Galaxy on Wednesday night, marking a second consecutive loss overall and third straight against Western Conference opponents.

The Rapids held a halftime lead over the Galaxy through Connor Ronan, but conceded once to Gabriel Pec and twice to Riqui Puig after the break en route to their first home loss in 11 matches.

Even so, coach Chris Armas believed the performance was a promising one.

"I'm proud that they stepped on the field and went for it," Armas said of his team. "We knew we were facing a really good team, we knew it was a team that was in first place for a good reason, a team that could challenge us in certain ways and we wanted to try to disrupt what they do. Our guys from the opening whistle really went after the game tonight."

Cole Bassett (nine goals, seven assists) missed the last two Rapids defeats with a thigh issue that isn't expected to be serious.

--Field Level Media