Pride fail to score again, fall to Racing Louisville

The Orlando Pride’s postseason chances took a significant blow Friday, losing 2-0 at Racing Louisville at Lynn Family Stadium.

The ninth-place Pride (5-8-6, 21 points) lost their third game in a row after having a seven-game unbeaten streak that revived their season. The top six teams qualify for the playoffs.

Orlando, which is 7 points back of the cutoff line, led in nearly every category, including a 14-11 advantage on shots. For the second game in a row, however, the Pride failed to score a goal.

“Frustrating game,” said forward Darian Jenkins. “We were really unlucky to not score in the first half, myself included.”

Nadia Nadim scored in the 10th minute and Savannah DeMelo registered a goal in the 50th.

Nadim’s goal came after the Pride missed a golden chance to score in the third minute.

“We’ve been down the first half a lot of times this season and came back from it,” Jenkins said. “We had moments where we kept our foot on the pedal. “

That didn’t happen this time.

“Disappointed, we felt that coming here would have been a great opportunity to bounce back from the last couple of results,” interim coach Seb Hines said. “Games are built on taking chances and Louisville took their chances and we didn’t.

“Goals change games. [If we had] scored in the first couple of minutes that changes the whole momentum of the game and we build on that. But it wasn’t meant to be and the result was us losing the game.”

Louisville (3-8-8, 17 points) and Orlando played to a 2-2 draw on July 3 at Daytona International Speedway.

Knowing it had to get 3 points to have a realistic shot at the postseason might’ve been too much for Orlando.

Orlando returns home for its next two matches at Exploria Stadium starting with the North Carolina Courage visit on Wednesday.