Sandy » The winless streak was all but history.

Striker Yura Movsisyan had scored a brilliant off-balance goal to reward Real Salt Lake for an entire night of hard work and near misses, fans were anticipating the postgame concert by "American Idol" star David Archuleta, and owner Dave Checketts was in his luxury suite, surely smiling at the strong showing and sellout crowd of 19,546 fans at Rio Tinto Stadium.

And just like that -- poof! -- it wasn't.

In the painful, last-minute fashion that so often has haunted RSL, Colorado's Mehdi Ballouchy --- a former RSL player -- threaded a neat little pass between RSL's Nat Borchers and Tony Beltran down the right side in the 88th minute, allowing teammate Omar Cummings to blast a tremendous shot off the bottom of the crossbar and past diving goalkeeper Nick Rimando to salvage a 1-1 draw for the Rapids and extend the home team's misery at least another week.

"I don't think you need to say anything," RSL's Clint Mathis said. "It's obvious. It has been time and time again."

It was the seventh straight game RSL has failed to win -- it's 0-4-3 in that span -- though coach Jason Kreis said he was going to work hard to emphasize the good things his team did.

Using an aggressive formation with three strikers to mitigate the suspensions of midfielders Javier Morales and Kyle Beckerman, RSL most of the night looked like the poised, tough, confident bunch it had been through the first month of the season. It controlled the pace of the game, generated a dangerous attack, and could have led by several goals, had it managed better aim.

"I was really pleased with the commitment, the dedication, the hard work that our guys put in tonight," Kreis said. "They really played with some self-belief, and I thought they really looked like a team that was wanting to fight and do all of those things together."

Alas, even after Movsisyan avenged another game full of errant shots with a stunning left-footed fallaway strike in the 79th minute -- "all I was thinking was, hold the lead," he said -- the team could not take the full three points. Defender Robbie Russell was sent off with his second yellow card in the 82nd minute, leaving RSL shorthanded and forced to alter its formation.

"It hurt, no doubt about it," Kreis said.

Still, the coach said the equalizing goal was "kind of a one-off," coming off a "little bit of a mental breakdown" of allowing Cummings to turn at the top of the box -- which is all Cummings said he had time to do, before shooting. Many of the RSL players gave him credit for hitting a "bomber."

"I really want to try to avoid having that goal mar what for me was a fantastic effort by the team," Kreis said. "If we fix that one small play, we're all extremely happy right now," Kreis said.

Yet, they're not.

The team moved to 3-6-3 for 12 points with its next two games on the road, while the Rapids extended their unbeaten streak to six games, improved to 4-2-5 for 17 points and forced RSL to have to win the last meeting of the year in the regular-season finale to retain the Rocky Mountain Cup.

"We just have to work through this right now," midfielder Ned Grabavoy said. "If we're getting ties, it's better than getting losses. But at some point, we need to starting getting wins."

mcl@sltrib.com