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SANDY — If a 3-1 stoppage-time loss at the rival Colorado Rapids wasn't the low point of Real Salt Lake's season thus far, it wasn't far off.
But out of tragedy may have come a new beginning for the Wasatch Front club.
RSL (6-7-8, 26 points) has rallied since a disappointing final 10 minutes on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, winning back-to-back games for the first time since June 21 with a 2-0 home win over Houston (6-8-6, 24) on Saturday night at Rio Tinto Stadium.
"The team is playing better," said midfielder Javier Morales, who had a goal and an assist in the victory over the Dynamo. "I can see the team is working hard. We tried to work for each other, and I think that's very important for us right now."
The win gives RSL a 3-1-1 record in the month of July with a game still left, Friday's annual Pioneer Day game against Sporting Kansas City. The Salt Lake side hasn't won three games in a month since 2014.
The team held a player's-only meeting after the loss, one head coach Jeff Cassar mentioned but nobody else would elaborate on, to get right — on the field and off it.
Whatever was said, it worked.
"I don't want to talk too much about that meeting. But when people talk and say everything face-to-face, I think it helps a lot," Morales said. "I think right now we are playing like a team, fighting for each other, working hard.
"I think now that thing that is always around here — 'The team is the star' — I think we are back there right now."
After a 1-0 win over the L.A. Galaxy sent Salt Lake on to its second U.S. Open Cup semifinal in three years, the defense once again stepped up to pitch its eighth shutout of the season — and Joao Plata scored his first goal of 2015 after starting the season late following a preseason injury to his fifth metatarsal.
"We're trying to build off the game against the Galaxy," said RSL defender Tony Beltran, who was also named to the 2015 MLS All-Star game-day roster Saturday. "We haven't had two wins in a row much this season, so that was a big focus tonight. It all starts defensively, being focused and keeping the ball."
Plata got back to his goal-scoring ways for the first time since Sept. 19, 2014, and the back line — formulating a new lineup with teenager Justen Glad replacing Chris Schuler following the latter's out against the Galaxy — helped keep the clean sheet.
But that honor, Beltran said, also goes to the rest of the team.
"The back four did a great job, Justen did a great job stepping in. Aaron's been heroic. It's really been a coming-of-age season for him," Beltran added. "But really it's an entire team effort. Everyone in front of us was also keeping the zero, and it helps. It's something to build off going forward."
Cassar, who watch Saturday's game from the box suite after earning a post-game red card at Colorado, said his squad of players have come together in the past eight days — and that is the kind of thing that could turn around a season for RSL, which moved into seventh place in the Western Conference and seven points below the playoff line.
"The team has really come together … and they are really working for each other," he said. "When we get back to that mentality, that's when we are at our best.
"It's not about the name on the back of the jersey, but the crest on the front. When everyone is working for each other, we'll get good results."
