Sockers Struggle to Victory : Soccer: Wright’s goal in overtime beats feisty Sidekicks, 4-3.

The Sockers have so many streaks, they’re almost not worth mentioning unless they are suddenly put in jeopardy.

Suffice to say the Sockers entered Friday’s game against Dallas having won all 22 games in which they were ahead after three quarters. They were facing Dallas in front of 7,377 at the Sports Arena, where they had taken 13 regular-season games in a row from the Sidekicks.

Those streaks were at risk, but they weren’t erased. Three minutes into overtime, Paul Wright shot from some 30 feet out and scored to give the Sockers a 4-3 victory.

“He (Wright) had it forever, didn’t he?” Coach Ron Newman asked rhetorically after the game.

Actually, Wright knew what he was going to do with the ball as soon as he took the pass from Kevin Crow.

“Hey, when it’s tied 3-3, all it takes is one shot,” Wright said. “I was just hoping to get close enough to shoot.”

When he did get within range, he sent a shot along the ground that neither defender Wes McLeod nor goalie Krys Sobieski could stop.

So the Sockers, with the help of Kansas City, which beat second-place St. Louis, 9-5, moved 3 1/2 games ahead of the Storm and more snugly into first place.

But it wasn’t easy--for some reason Dallas isn’t rolling over despite being 13 games out.

Newman credited the Sidekicks’ spryness to the efforts of new Coach Gordon Jago, but Jago deflected it to his players.

“They’re on top and we’re on the bottom,” Jago said of the two teams, “but tonight we gave it all we had.”

Tatu gave more than others. He scored twice, tying the game on each occasion.

In fact, it was his goal that sent the thing into overtime. It came eight minutes into the fourth quarter, when he put in a shot from 30 feet out while teammate Beto screened Socker goalie Victor Nogueira.

The goal erased a 3-2 lead the Sockers forged five minutes into the third quarter when Branko Segota fought through a trio of players in front of the net and deflected the ball by Sobieski.

The Sockers’ first two goals came in the first minute of each the first and second quarters.

Nineteen seconds into the game, Brian Quinn gave himself a pass off the end boards to elude Tatu, who was back on defense, then put a shot just inside the far-left post for a 1-0 lead.

The lead lasted all of 55 seconds. Dallas scored on a power play (David Banks was whistled for pushing Tatu). It was an easy goal for Bruno Ferretti, who took a crossing pass from Tatu at the right post and, unmarked, simply tapped it in with his instep.

That the goal came with little resistance was something of a surprise. In their 11 previous penalty-killing situations, the Sockers had allowed the opposition to score only twice. In fact, they entered the game with the league’s highest-ranked penalty-killing unit, with a 72.2% success rate.

Neither team scored again in the first quarter and to punctuate the parity, both teams finished with eight shots on goal.

It took the Sockers 48 seconds to regain their lead after the second quarter began.

Waad Hirmez finished a play started when Wright stole the ball from Roderick Scott.

The Sockers moved the ball upfield with three one-touch passes before Hirmez took it along the right boards, dribbled in and lofted a lazy shot over Sobieski and into the net.

Dallas tied it five minutes later. That’s when Tatu stole the ball from Ben Collins in the midfield, dribbled up and got through a slide tackle by Collins. Tatu unleashed a shot from 35 feet out that kicked in off the inside of the left post.

On a power play late in the first half, the Sockers came up empty on four shots. They controlled the ball for 1:54 of the two-minute penalty, but Sbieski came up with four of the best saves of the night.

The Sockers entered the game second in the league in power-play efficiency; they had scored on 54.3% of their power plays at the Sports Arena.

MSL Notes

Sockers’ developmental midfielder Garrett Smith suited up for the first time this season. . . . The halftime entertainment is getting better all the time--Friday, a radio station put on a game of musical chairs. . . . Bernie Mullin, who has spent the past eight months lining up owners and sponsors for a proposed MSL expansion team in Pittsburgh, is ready to delete the word proposed . Earlier this week Mullin secured a sponsorship from a Pittsburgh company “so large that it makes ownership of this thing very economically viable,” he said, adding that an ownership group he put together will now follow through. Mullin would not reveal the the company’s identity.