Everybody Plays His Role in Decisive Splash Victory : Indoor soccer: Seven players have a hand in beating San Diego Sockers, 8-6, to advance to CISL semifinals.

Sean Bowers talked about it before the playoffs began, about the star system, and that the Splash is a team devoid of go-to guys.

On Tuesday, that team of role players defeated the San Diego Sockers, 8-6, before an announced crowd of 5,925 at The Pond and advanced to the Continental Indoor Soccer League semifinals by winning the best-of-three series, 2-1.

The Splash opens Thursday in Sacramento against the Knights, who beat San Jose in three games. Game 2 will be at The Pond at noon Saturday.

“We don’t have a bona fide star,” said co-captain Doug Neely, who scored twice Tuesday. “They can’t aim for one person because there’s no one in particular that we’re going to.”

Bowers had three blocks and was part of an inspired defensive effort that held the Sockers to four goals until they went to a sixth attacker with 5 minutes 10 seconds left. Bowers said his team would need to shut down John Olu Molomo and Mark Chung in this series.

And it did.

Molomo scored four goals and had one assist, but in the decisive game, his only goal was the last one, at 13:29.

Chung had one goal and two assists in three games.

Splash goalkeeper Ruben Fernandez faced 30 shots and had 12 saves.

“You can’t just shut down one person on this team,” Bowers said. “We have too many weapons. I felt if we held Chung and Molomo to one or two goals, we had a chance.”

The Splash got goals from seven players, including four who had not scored in the series--Neely, Raffaele Ruotolo, Sam George and Rod Castro, who missed the first two games because of a bruised foot.

“That’s why it’s so exciting to be a part of this team,” said Ruotolo, who played with a limp from a calf bruise that made him questionable before kickoff. “This is a totally different team from the start of the season. When someone like Rod or me goes down, everyone else picks them up and plays twice as hard.”

That much was apparent.

Down 1-0, Neely, Jose Vasquez and Armando Valdivia scored to put the Splash up, 3-1, its first halftime lead of the series.

After Diego Terry scored 19 seconds into the third quarter, Neely took a nice feed from Paul McDonnell (two assists), and then 85 seconds later, Ruotolo scored from 35 feet to make it 5-2.

George and Castro scored within two minutes of each other in the fourth to make it 7-3, and Lilavois followed Chung’s goal when he stripped the ball from Chung--the sixth attacker--and punched it in.