T&T mid­field­er Kevin Moli­no scored his first goal of the sea­son in the US Ma­jor League Soc­cer but it was not enough to earn his Colum­bus Crew a win as Port­land Tim­bers scored late in stop­page time through mid­field­er San­ti­a­go Moreno to earn a road point at Low­er.Com Field.

The at­tack for the Crew was of­ten ig­nit­ed by Cu­cho Her­nan­dez, who got start­ed in the sec­ond minute with an open look that he sailed over the cross­bar.

In the tenth minute, Diego Chara fouled Her­nan­dez, set­ting up a dan­ger­ous set piece chance that ul­ti­mate­ly came up emp­ty for Colum­bus.

A pair of yel­low cards were hand­ed out in the tenth and 25th min­utes: the first to Colum­bus’ Aidan Mor­ris for his chal­lenge on Diego Chara, and the sec­ond to Yim­mi Chara for an in­ci­den­tal kick to the face of a Colum­bus de­fend­er.

In the 28th minute, Her­nan­dez got back to work and fired a long shot that just missed the frame of the goal. One minute lat­er, on the oth­er end, Da­iron As­pril­la missed a head­er on the feed from Se­bas­t­ian Blan­co — a rare of­fen­sive op­por­tu­ni­ty for Port­land squan­dered.

Colum­bus fi­nal­ly broke through to score in the 36th minute when Moli­no, who missed the start of the sea­son due to in­jury made a run past a frozen As­pril­la, and with no back­up be­hind Port­land’s right wing­back on the day, he scored with ease to put the Crew up 1-0.

Moli­no, who was called up to the T&T squad for the up­com­ing in­ter­na­tion­al win­dow, gave the home side the lead in the 36th minute when he scored his first goal of the sea­son— and his first for the Crew since Au­gust 4, 2021.

Port­land came out in the sec­ond half with an in­creased sense of ur­gency, putting it­self in more promis­ing po­si­tions to score, and in the 58th minute, Moreno put a per­fect ball across to a streak­ing Yim­mi Chara, but the shot was saved well by Colum­bus keep­er Eloy Room.

Room made an­oth­er im­pres­sive save one minute lat­er as Eryk Williamson’s cor­ner kick met the head of Tu­ilo­ma, who was able to put it on tar­get. Moreno had a pair of cor­ners smacked away by Room in the 62nd minute as well.

Her­nan­dez had a pair of chances in the 75th and 78th min­utes, nei­ther of which found the back of the net, while in the 81st, Moli­no seemed to score the sec­ond goal for Colum­bus, but he was just a hair off­side.

Port­land brought on a trio of sub­sti­tutes in the 82nd minute: new sign­ing Juan Mos­quera for Mabi­ala (Mos­quera’s de­but), Mar­vin Lo­ria for Yim­mi Chara, and Cristhi­an Pare­des for Williamson. In the 88th minute, they brought on Nathan Fo­gaça for Diego Chara, hop­ing to add even more at­tack­ing prowess.

The Tim­bers had their share of chances down the stretch, but it was Moreno’s curl­ing beau­ty from out­side the box in the 95th minute — just as the ref­er­ee was about to blow his whis­tle and end the match—that brought the game to a stun­ning 1-1 fi­nal score line.

There will be plen­ty of time to re­cov­er and re­fo­cus for the fi­nal three match­es of the reg­u­lar sea­son, for the Crew though, with the in­ter­na­tion­al break be­gin­ning, and their next match be­ing at home on Oc­to­ber 1 at Low­er.com Field against the New York Red Bulls.

The Crew has 42 points from 31 games, like In­ter Mi­a­mi CF, the club of T&T’s Jo­evin Jones in the race for the fi­nal play­offs spot, af­ter their 32- win over DC Unit­ed on Sun­day but is be­hind based on to­tal wins. Mi­a­mi has 12, while Colum­bus has nine.

The Tim­bers (11-8-13, 46 points) as­cend to 5th in the West­ern Con­fer­ence with the draw, one point ahead of Min­neso­ta Unit­ed and one point be­hind Nashville SC with two games re­main­ing on their sched­ule.