You can point to the clean sheet – the team’s second in the tournament. You can point to the positive margin in shots and possession. You can point to the sense that the team dominated much of the game’s tempo and play.
But there’s no getting around the fact that Portland Thorns FC’s 0-0 draw Monday against the OL Reign placed the team in the eighth seed at the bottom of the standings.
However, with every team making the quarterfinals, Portland now finds itself, in many ways, back at the beginning when they played in the tournament opener.