Kreis, refusing to ignore Vancouver win, and who might play Saturday

Jason Kreis said after Tuesday's ... uh, well, you know what it was — he said then that he can't ignore Saturday's win over Vancouver, the preceding week's loss to San Jose, and the loss on Tuesday.

More specifically, he said: "I think that we can't just look at that game and discredit it. I won't. I refuse to. So we'll look at that, look at this match, the San Jose match and we'll have to make difficult decisions about who's going to carry us through the end of the season."

That's about as unequivocal as you'll ever hear Jason Kreis in this situation. "I refuse to." Strong words, Mr. Kreis. But necessary ones, and ones we should take with a literal eye. Kreis refuses to discredit Saturday's fine result because 1) we were pretty good, all told, and 2) because internal and external factors are surely urging him to take a less veteran group into the playoffs. In essence, he'd be refusing to let common judgment - that you should continue with your veterans as you move into the playoffs - override the specific judgments he's made as coach.

Some of those choices are more difficult than others. I'm not going to throw players under the bus here, particularly as it's difficult to pinpoint any one player who played worse than every other player throughout - both on Tuesday and against San Jose.

That's important because some already have jumped on individuals. It's not so simple, and a look at the goal conceded Tuesday indicates as much. Kyle Beckerman's over-committed, Carlos Salcedo hasn't recognized that Beckerman has vacated vital space, Ned Grabavoy hasn't continued tracking back from the midfield, Chris Wingert and Nat Borchers are covering the same man, and Sebastian Velasquez isn't sure at all who he's covering. It's all very frustrating stuff, but putting that loss on anybody in particular is untoward.

So we can speculate and ruminate on who might sit out, and who might be pegged for a starting spot tomorrow, but it's not going to mean anything until we recognize that the blame should be spread around - not heaped on one player, one coach, or one system.

Who plays Saturday, then? I don't know. But if we saw a repeat of the win over Vancouver a week ago, I don't know that anybody would complain.