only to bounce off the face of the crossbar. Pickens then scrambled to smother the ball at Hernandez's feet and preserve the draw for both teams.
• Hamlett made five changes from the last team that Dave Sarachan ran out in a 3-1 loss at D.C. United. Logan Pause returned from injury and Ivan Guerrero from international duty, while Brian Plotkin, Willian Oliveira and Jerson Monteiro also came into the team. Returning to the substitutes' bench were Dasan Robinson, Floyd Franks and Calen Carr, while Jeff Curtin and Jordan Russolillo were not in the 18-man gameday roster.
• Here's Hamlett's team (4-4-2): Matt Pickens - Logan Pause, C.J. Brown, Diego Gutierrez, Gonzalo Segares - Ivan Guerrero, Brian Plotkin, Bakary Soumare, Willian Oliveira (Chris Armas 56) - Jerson Monteiro (Calen Carr 67), Chad Barrett (Thiago 70). Substitutes Not Used: Jon Busch, Floyd Franks, Bruno Menezes, Dasan Robinson
• "It's no secret that we've been having a problem scoring," Hamlett said. "I don't know if it was the weather or what, but I thought we would get off to a better start, but for whatever reason we never got going. I thought we prepared well this week. I give Colorado a lot of credit. As soon as we played the ball wide, they kind of jumped us."
TEAM NEWS
• The Fire have now been shut out in four of the last six games, after scoring in each of the first seven. "In games like this you need guys that want to move and get in their spots to receive the ball, and we just didn't have that. We didn't have enough guys moving off the ball, and making it easier for teammates," Hamlett said. "Tonight was a difficult night. From the start our passing and movement wasn't good enough. It made for a hard night."
• It was a new-look Fire team in Hamlett's first game in charge. Diego Gutierrez, who has figured all season in a holding midfield role, moved to center back. Brian Plotkin, generally a wide midfielder, moved centrally alongside Bakary Soumare.
• "The first half, they stepped up and they pressed us back pretty hard. We continued to play out, attempted to play out and it didn't really work very much," said Logan Pause. "We should have played a couple over the top. We weren't winning a whole lot of second balls. We weren't getting those guys involved. We couldn't find Baki (Bakary Soumare) and Plotty (Brian Plotkin) when we had the ball playing into their end. That's a combination of us needing to do better with the ball and maybe needing to show a little bit, but it definitely needs to step up."
• Pause was one of a number of Fire players who returned after long injury layoffs. Pause had missed the last three games for Chicago. Chris Armas came on as a substitute after missing two games, and Thiago also came on for the final 20 minutes after missing four games.
• "It's nice to have Thiago back after five weeks and also to have Armas back," Hamlett said. "We had them in the second half and Thiago was limited in the amount of minutes for (Sunday)."
• It was a second shutout in four games for the Fire, who since the beginning of May have allowed three goals in a game on four occasions and two goals on two others.
• "Obviously as a team, we're all concentrating a little bit more on trying to get behind the ball. I don't think we were very good today in the back with the ball so that wasn't a good thing from us. But were still man-marking well and trying to cover space well and falling in runs pretty good," said defender C.J. Brown. [Matt] Pickens came up big in some saves. I think we're all just paying attention to the defensive part of the game right now. Hopefully, we can get that right for a while and then get back to offensive."
