The Los Angeles Galaxy continued their chase for back-to-back championships on Wednesday night, dispatching the San Jose Earthquakes 3-1 to advance to the conference finals.
San Jose won 1-0 in Sunday in Los Angeles, but fell short on Wednesday night at Buck Shaw Stadium. The Earthquakes were in a good position to take the series after the road shutout, but couldn't close out the game at home.
Los Angeles advanced on a 3-2 aggregate and will face off against the winner of the series between Real Salt Lake and the Seattle Sounders.
The Galaxy knew coming into the game that they needed a big performance or they would not advance. The Earthquakes had the early 1-0 aggregate advantage, but Robbie Keane made sure it didn't last.
Keane scored two goals for the Galaxy, while Mike Magee added a third in the 39th minute. Keane was an unstoppable force for the Galaxy, scoring two goals within 13 minutes. Keane was second in the league in scoring this year in the league, netting 18 goals.
Keane's first goal came in the 21st minute after he kicked the ball past Jon Busch and off of the inside goal post. His second goal came after a fantastic pass from Landon Donovan, who placed the ball perfectly past Busch to give Keane a clear net.
"We gave it everything we had again," Busch said to ESPN.com. "Unfortunately just a touch short tonight. I really felt like once we got that first one we were going to get a second one and get it into overtime. It just didn't happen for us tonight. Credit goes to L.A. -- they did just enough to survive."
Donovan also got in on the action, assisting on Magee's goal and Keane's second score. Donovan was the regular-season leader in assists for the team with 15.
The Galaxy attacked consistently throughout the game and had two chances to score on free kicks by David Beckham in the early stages of the match. The Galaxy played much better than on Sunday, when the team was held without a shot through the first 66 minutes.
"[The Galaxy] are defending champions for a reason," said Busch. "They have the experience, they've been there. For this group, it's obviously going to hurt for a while, but it's part of the growing pains, getting the experience. For the young guys on this team, we took huge strides from last year to this year... We'll learn from it."
The Galaxy did an excellent job of shutting down San Jose's Chris Wondolowski for the series, holding him pointless in two games. He didn't score throughout the playoffs after tying the single-season record with 27 regular-season goals.
"I had three very good chances, missed all three, and I let the team down," Wondolowski said.
Wondolowski had a great chance to net a goal early in the game, but he put a shot over the crossbar at the 26th minute.
San Jose won 1-0 on Sunday after a 94th minute goal by Victor Bernardez, but was held scoreless on Wednesday until the 82nd minute after a goal by Alan Gordon. The Earthquakes fought hard at the end of the game, but couldn't put another goal in the net past Galaxy keeper Josh Saunders.
Saunders had a solid game for the Galaxy, stopping all of San Jose's shots on goal until the latter stages of the game.
"We lost, end of [expletive] story is we lost," Busch said. "We played a good team. It's hard to beat a quality team like that five times in a row in one season. We went 3-1-1 with [L.A.]. That's a pretty damn good record against the defending champions. It hurts because we lost the most important one."
On the Eastern Conference side, the Houston Dynamo made it to the conference finals and will await the winner of the New York Red Bulls and the DC United.
