Sockers Give Storm Painful Experience : Soccer: San Diego moves closer to MSL final with 11-4 victory. The Sockers hold a 3-1 edge in the Western Division final series.

Already reeling from four major injuries suffered in the MSL Western Division finals, the Storm Thursday night suffered its biggest wound yet--an 11-4 loss to the Sockers in Game 4 of the series.

The victory, in front of 4,633 at The Arena, put the Sockers a victory away from the championship series.

The Sockers now lead the best-of-seven series, 3-1, with Game 5 set for Saturday at The Arena at 5:30 p.m. PDT.

Although the final score does not lie, Socker players insisted it was not quite the truth.

“I don’t think you can say the goals came easy,” said Rod Castro, who scored one and assisted on two others. “We worked extremely hard and it paid off.”

It was apparent both teams hustled and put forth an extra effort not present in Game 3. The Sockers had to atone for losing that one by a goal.

The Storm had to come up with more to make up for the absence of four players, including goalie Zoltan Toth and high-scoring midfielder Thompson Usiyan, who were injured in earlier games.

Sure enough, Storm players spent the night chasing loose balls with abandon and pushing the ball on offense.

However, they forgot to play defense.

Six of the Sockers’ goals, including their first three, were tap-ins at the far post.

“They’re all good players, and they played great one-two passing,” St. Louis ‘keeper Slobo Ilijevski said. “They always came from the back and managed to find the opening. There’s not much I can do about that.”

Ilijevski did come up big several times. He faced 40 shots and made 19 saves.

“You can’t blame it on Slobo,” the Sockers’ Waad Hirmez said. “Slobo can play only as good as his defense. He can only do so much and he came up with some brilliant saves tonight.”

Hirmez should know. Ilijevski’s best save came on a free kick early in the second quarter that Hirmez aimed at the upper-right corner of the net after Brian Quinn pulled the Storm defense out of position with a dummy run. Ilijevski got to it with a fully-extended dive.

Comparatively, Socker goalie Victor Nogueira faced 23 shots and finished with 12 saves.

Ilijevski’s luck began to run out late in the third quarter as the Sockers scored four goals in a span of two minutes and 13 seconds.

“We had been creating chances, but could never get anything past Slobo,” Coach Ron Newman said. “We just broke the barrier finally.”

Paul Dougherty got the first goal with a minute and 45 seconds remaining in the third quarter by running onto a loose ball in front of the net. Ilijevski was down, having just saved a bullet off the foot of Paul Wright, and Dougherty didn’t miss the proverbial back side of the barn.

That made it 4-3, Sockers. But 25 seconds later, St. Louis’ Marcio Leite tied it off a pass from Daryl Doran.

In rapid succession:

--Brian Quinn wound up and met a loose ball with his left shoe laces and hit it into the upper-left corner. The ball made its way to Quinn only after Greg Muhr tried clearing the ball, but mishit it and kicked it right to Quinn, 5-4.

--With 35 seconds remaining in the third, Castro beat Doran and Dan Donigan to a ball in the right corner and slipped a shot by Ilijevski as the goalie came off his line. Castro’s slow roller made its way just inside the far post, 6-4.

--After 25 seconds ticked off in the final quarter, Jacques Ladouceur followed a shot by Wes Wade that was too hot for Ilijevski to handle. The rebound made its way to the left foot of Ladouceur who one-dribbled by the goalie, then tucked it into the net, 7-4.

That last one took away the Storm’s fortitude. Glenn Carbonara, Quinn, Dougherty and Ben Collins added fourth-quarter goals with little resistance.

“We got some easy goals after we made it 7-4,” Quinn said. “But we worked our asses off to get there.”

The Storm did keep it close in the early going. Preki scored the game’s first goal on a shootout to give St. Louis the initial lead.

The Storm were awarded the shootout when Dougherty was called for pushing Doran on what referee Esse Baharmast determined to be a breakaway. But neither player had control of the ball.

“I thought that call should have went the other way,” Newman said.

Dougherty, too, was surprised.

“Doran wasn’t going to get the ball,” he said. “He came across and ran into me.”

Nonetheless, St. Louis had a 1-0 lead.

A short-lived 1-0 lead. Two and a half minutes later, rookie David Banks scored his first playoff goal after working a give and go with Dougherty. Banks kept running right to left through the penalty area after giving the ball to Dougherty. And when Dougherty passed it back to Banks, three St. Louis defenders thought the ball was headed to Wes Wade at the near post. But it went to Banks who hit it inside the back post.

Another two and a half minutes later, Kevin Crow was at the near post to collect an errant shot from Castro and redirect it on target.

Nearly two minutes later, Hirmez made it 3-1 after taking a pass from Quinn at the left post.

This time the Storm were able to come back on goals from Terry Brown and Leite.

But the Sockers weren’t about to blow their next two-goal lead, their third in the past two games.

“In the third quarter when we got two goals up,” Dougherty said, “we weren’t about to lose it. They’ve come back from two goals down before, and we weren’t going to make that mistake again.”

Then again, the Storm appeared in no shape to make another comeback.

“They just stopped in the third quarter,” Hirmez said. “They just stopped.”