By NINO CARDENAS
LAREDO MORNING TIMES
The Laredo Heat leaves the comforts of home and hits the road for its next four games.
Tonight and Saturday at El Paso, the club will get an idea if it brought its suddenly potent offense along for the trip.
The Heat (5-1-3, 18 points) knocked in four goals in their last four games, while the Patriots (3-4-3, 12) collected only three in their past four.
The Mid South Division title and two playoff spots are on the line heading into the second half of the season.
The Patriots, along with the Baton Rouge Capitals and New Orleans Shell Shockers are tied for third place and are six points behind Laredo and 10 behind division leader Austin Aztex (7-1-1, 22).
In an effort to salvage the season, the Patriots’ Miguel Murillo experiment came to a close as the coach was replaced by Javier McDonald last week.
The first move he made was to reacquire the services of Michael Greigo, who paid dividends by scoring two goals in the Patriots’ doubleheader versus the Dallas-Fort Worth Tornados last weekend. El Paso tied DFW in the first game and won Game 2 to move into the three-way tie.
The tradition-rich Patriots squad was the dominant team in the South before Laredo came into the picture. They uncharacteristically missed the playoffs in 2006 before regaining their form in 2007.
“They’re a relatively new team, but that makes them an enigma and therefore a dangerous team for us,” Heat coach Israel Collazo said.
That didn’t stop management from reshaping the team and hiring Murillo in an effort to establish a strong foundation from the youth teams up.
His youth influx resulted in a slow start for the Patriots as new faces dotted the field.
In McDonald’s first two games, he started five of last year’s players in Greigo, Antonio Barrera, Mario Garcia, Rodrigo Morin and Esteban Palacios.
“We realize that they did change dramatically, but they’re still a strong opponent and we can’t take them lightly,” Heat midfielder Juan de Dios Ibarra said.
Ibarra and Felix Garcia have been the two central figures in the Heat’s offensive revival. Garcia has knocked in five goals and Ibarra three.
The slow offensive start didn’t faze the team too much, Ibarra said, pointing to last year’s championship run when the Heat started by scoring eight goals in its first six games. This year the Heat has knocked in six goals in the first six games.
Besides Garcia and Ibarra, four other Heat players have one goal apiece and of those four, only Isaac Morales was a starter for the team last year.
Silas Blackwell, Greg and Oliver Mulamba and Theo Browne knocked in their first goal as a member of the Laredo Heat.
“It’s a difficult process, but we are working towards getting them better,” Collazo said. “Hopefully by the final games of the season we’ll be strong up front.”
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