Colorado Rapids 3 Houston Dynamo 0 - Home Cooking

Twice officially makes it a trend. Perhaps the competition hasn't been top class, but the Colorado Rapids have now won two straight games by three goals, with a clean sheet in one and only a late wondergoal keeping the other from being the same. Sunday night, the Rapids found their scoring touch again, with Deshorn Brown playing the biggest part as he escaped Snakebite Hell for two of the goals in a 3-0 victory.

Right from the outset, this didn't have the makings of a good day for the Dynamo. They were forced to play with only six substitutes on the bench, with their team so depleted by national team call-ups and injuries that they were running out of players to select. The starting XI wasn't particularly frightening, with the majority of their attacking lynchpins missing, including Brad Davis and Boniek Garcia. The day started off quickly for the Rapids, with Deshorn Brown finding himself unmarked in the box only five minutes in. Marvell Wynne put in a decent cross from the right back spot, and all Brown had to do was snap it down to break his spell of bad luck and get the Rapids up 1-0.

His second of the match came a half hour later, as Dillon Powers sprung him through with a nice through ball for a 1v1 with Tally Hall. His usual erratic finishing vanished, and he cooly slotted it into the lower corner. Even though they were only 2-0 up, it looked like the match had already been won at that point. Houston never put up much of a fight through the half and the Rapids ended it with a bogus 70% of the possession to go along with their goal hoard. In fact, it could easily have been 3-0 or 4-0 by the end of the first half, but for a few unlucky misses and Kamani Hill's open-net shot getting cleared off the line.

Hill got his redemption shortly after the second half began. Though the Dynamo came out with an unsurprising burst of energy after the break, they looked only marginally more threatening than they had been to start with, and the Rapids quickly worked their way back into the driver's seat. A corner kick, whipped in by Powers, was snatched onto by Hill for a Goal of the Week candidate that could only be described as a 'kung fu goal', as MLS' twitter account put it.

The third could have turned into a fourth or fifth had some of Dillon Serna's attempts found the back of the net instead of the post or side netting. Pablo Mastroeni turned down the jets a bit come the 65th minute, bringing on some substitutes and letting the Rapids slow the tempo down a bit. Other than a Will Bruin shot that shattered the crossbar though, the Dynamo continued not to threaten in any real meaningful way.

4-1, 3-0, ???. We'll see if the Rapids can make it a three for three homestand when the Chicago Fire come to town on Wednesday. They're another team that have been struggling for form, much like the Impact and Dynamo. You have to like those odds.