The Riptide Report: Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC vs Rhode Island FC - 7/25/2026

Rhode Island FC got the job done in Pittsburgh tonight and came away with a 1-0 win. It marks the second time RIFC have taken all three points from the Riverhounds in what was the seventh meeting between the two teams. A second half goal from JJ Williams was all RIFC needed in attack to secure the victory. Here are my quick takeaways from a big win on the road:

The Best Ability is Availability

I'm always refreshing my phone an hour before kickoff in order to get the lineup and availability report as soon as they're posted (even though I have notifications on). Today's were less than ideal:

You could very easily make the argument that five of those six players on the availability report would deserve to be in the starting 11. And with all of those players missing it meant that RIFC only had six players on the bench with two of them being goalkeepers. It's safe to say this didn't fill me with much confidence heading into the game. The starting 11 was fine but that bench didn't provide many options to change the game if need be.

Air JJ

For this season so far at least, you can always count on JJ. And he made all the difference in this one getting the game's only goal:

It was a nice ball in from Nick Scardina. And when you stand the ball up at the far post like that, you can expect JJ to be there. It feels like at times the team's strategy is "F it, JJ is up there somewhere". But honestly it often works out. It was a nice play here in a tight game to give RIFC the 1-0 lead.

Game Management

In the press conference after the Hartford win last weekend, Khano touched on game management. RIFC has had a tendency to concede at inopportune times, specifically after going ahead. Tonight, they were able to see the game out. Pittsburgh had some chances late but Koke Vegas did well to protect his clean sheet. And I thought the rest of the team did well to defend as a unit in front of him. Especially given the limited players available as I mentioned earlier. The only substitutions were Busy for Pity, Rovira for Kwizera, and CJ Williams for Noah Fuson. Hopefully this newfound ability to see games out is a trend we can continue to see moving forward.

Hey, Ref!

As fans, we usually give refs a hard time. It kind of just comes with the territory. But also, most of the time it's deserved in this league. However, tonight I thought I'd take some time to give a shout out to this evening's referee Abdou Ndiaye. He had a great game out there. The best I can remember from any ref we've had in an RIFC game. He had a good handle on things and preferred to talk to players rather than just hand out cards. Each team only ended up with a yellow card apiece. Ndiaye also didn't fall for players trying to get fouls and I regularly saw him telling players to get up and play on.

Given all this, it comes as no surprise that when I looked him up I saw that he was named the USL Championship's referee of the year in 2024. From my brief research, we had him once in 2024 which coincidentally was also against the Riverhounds in Pittsburgh, and twice in 2025 at home against Birmingham and away in Phoenix. This is supposed to be a quick blog so I'm not going to go back and analyze those games but I'm going to assume that since I don't remember much about them, he must have been good then too.

Up Next

This win moves RIFC up to sixth in the Eastern Conference at the time of writing. How quickly things can change. I wrote in the Prematch Lookout that I was hoping the team could take some momentum from the derby win and get a result out in Pittsburgh and they did it. They surpassed my expectations actually as I only predicted a draw. Now the boys will travel down to Birmingham for a game next Saturday night.

Before that though, we'll have Player Ratings and the Postmatch Pod tomorrow. I'm hoping for some pretty high scores from Timmy but you never know what that guy is going to do. The pod will also be a lot of fun, especially since a win forces Kerwin to be somewhat positive, something he doesn't seem to like doing. As for me, I'll be back here on Friday to preview that game down in Birmingham. Until then, UP THE TIDE!