Splash Gets Into Playoff Trouble Again : Soccer: Anaheim loses, 5-4, to Las Vegas in the opening game of the CISL semifinal series. It must win Game 2 to avoid elimination.

One would have thought the Splash would have learned its lesson.

Coach George Fernandez has told his players, over and over: Play like a team.

Instead, the Las Vegas Dustdevils scored a 5-4 victory in front of 5,758 at The Pond on Friday in Game 1 of the best-of-three Continental Indoor Soccer League semifinal series, which goes to the Thomas & Mack Center for Game 2 Sunday.

“We’ve done it once,” said Splash forward Rod Castro about coming back in a series, “but you can only roll seven so many times.”

And now they have to do it in Las Vegas, where the Splash lost, 9-8, in the last week of the regular season, 9-8. In that game, the Dustdevils were without Branko Segota and Roderick Scott.

Friday, Segota had three goals and Scott had two assists as the Dustdevils overcame a two-goal, halftime deficit.

Segota has seven playoff goals. His final goal, 11 minutes 44 seconds into the fourth quarter, gave the Dustdevils their first lead and helped them avoid their third consecutive overtime game.

“He’s scary. You can’t do anything to stop him,” said Splash Coach George Fernandez, who played alongside Segota in the MISL.

“Not only can he score, but his passing is phenomenal. He can see the field with great ease.

“In the past he’s been a superstar in the indoor league and that hasn’t changed one bit.”

Yet, Segota wasn’t named to the All-CISL team. No Dustdevil made the first or second team, while the Splash had two--defender Ralph Black and midfielder Doug Neely.

Just goes to show that unselfish team play goes a long way. As a result, Fernandez’s sentences were short after the game:

“We didn’t play as a team,” he said.

You would think they learned their lesson?

“You would think so.”

Why aren’t they playing as a team?

“Probably the pressure, the playoffs,” he said. “Everybody wants to be the guy. Everybody wants to make the great pass or make the great goal. . . . We’re trying way too hard individually.”

Did anyone play well?

There was a long pause before Fernandez reached his conclusion: “I can’t think of one.”

Now the Splash is in the same position it was against Sacramento in the quarterfinals--in need of a victory on the road to avoid elimination despite having the league’s second-best record. Las Vegas was third in the Western Division. If needed, Game 3 will be Wednesday at The Pond.

“We’re better on the road than at home right now,” Fernandez said. “I have no idea what goes through some of these guys’ minds. They’re not listening, obviously.

“Our passing was terrible. We couldn’t pass the ball from Point A to Point B.”

At least two Dustdevil goals came after poor passes from the back against Las Vegas’ pressure.

The Splash has now lost as many games at home in the playoffs as it did during the regular season, and it has scored fewer than five goals twice this season--both in the playoffs.

Dale Ervine had a hand in the Splash’s first three goals after being limited to only two assists in the first three games of the playoffs--and those came in Game 3 against Sacramento.

He scored the Splash’s first two goals and assisted on the third--to Armando Valdivia--as the Splash took a 3-1 halftime lead.

From there, the offense went stale--only Ralph Black’s power-play goal to make it 4-3 prevented a second-half shutout. As a result, a season-high 22 saves by Jorge Valenzuela went for waste.

“The key to the game was containing Segota and not making stupid mistakes,” Castro said. “We did neither.”