The Pittsburgh Riverhounds went 9-1-6 down the stretch in the regular season to rally for a USL Championship playoff spot.

Once the playoffs started, the rally ended.

Nick Markanich scored the game’s lone goal in the eighth minute to lead the Charleston Battery to a 1-0 victory over the Riverhounds in a first-round matchup Saturday night.

“It’s tough,” coach Bob Lilley said in a video released by the team on social media. “Charleston is an explosive team.They get the early goal. We created some chances, but they were able to focus on their defending. They made it hard for us. We had to be careful to not fall further behind.”

Charleston midfielder Arturo Rodriguez sent a pass to the far post from the top-left corner of the 18-yard box and Markanich sent a diving header past Riverhounds goalie Eric Dick.

Markanich won the Golden Boot in the regular season as the USL Championship’s top goal scorer with a league-record setting 28. Dick won the Golden Glove as the goalkeeper with the lowest goals-against average (0.69).

“If we attacked that ball, that ball shouldn’t drop as well as it did,” Lilley said. “If we attack that ball in the box, it’s not typically a ball we would give up a goal to. It’s a tough way to concede. We hung in there. We just couldn’t find a goal unfortunately.”

The Riverhounds’ best chance to tie came in the 70th minute when a bouncing ball in the penalty area ended up with Robbie Mertz near the left post. Charleston’s Jay Chapman partially blocked the shot.

The Riverhounds have made the playoffs for seven consecutive seasons. They’ve lost in the first round in five of those seven years.

“There’s areas where we need to get better. We gotta improve,” Lilley said. “We gotta look to make the team stronger and add some pieces into this group, but I’m happy with the progress in the second part of the year. The beginning of the year was poor. Thankfully we were able to get better, but I think we have to be realistic and know there’s still a lot of work we have to do to get to the point where we’re ready for these moments.”

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