The Col­orado Rapids eas­i­ly took care of a strug­gling San Jose Earth­quakes club 5–0 in Wednes­day night’s match at Dick’s Sport­ing Goods Park.

The Rapids’ win, their third of their last four match­es, moves them into a tie with FC Dal­las for fourth in the West­ern Con­fer­ence. The top four teams in each con­fer­ence host match­es in the first round of the MLS playoffs.

Here are three take­aways from the Rapids win:

Cole world-class?

Cole Bas­sett had Twit­ter abuzz with his fourth goal in sev­en games. The midfielder’s one-touch vol­ley off of a Jack Price restart gave Col­orado a 1–0 lead. The 19-year-old’s added three assists in the past sev­en match­es as well, includ­ing one against the Quakes, dur­ing an incred­i­ble run of play.

“A goal and an assist tonight and a num­ber of goals over the last num­ber of games — the sta­tis­tics are great, but it’s more about ing him devel­op. His game intel­li­gence con­tin­ues to grow,” Rapids coach Robin Fras­er said. “He’s a play­er who under­stands how to find the space that he needs to exe­cute the play that he needs to exe­cute. This is not an easy thing for young play­ers to under­stand and Cole’s progress has obvi­ous­ly been good over the last year or so.”

The soc­cer com­mu­ni­ty is keep­ing a close eye on Bas­sett after one of his con­tem­po­raries was report­ed­ly sold over­seas — Philadel­phia Union mid­field­er Bren­den Aaron­son to RB Salzburg of Aus­tria. The 19-year-old is the lat­est in a line of young Amer­i­can mid­field­ers to be sold to Europe. Bas­sett may very well be next.

Look­ing at both play­ers’ MLS careers, Bas­sett has 12 goals and assists in 1,931 min­utes of play, where­as Aaron­son has 9 scores or helpers in 2,754 min­utes. This year alone Bas­sett has notched his name in the score­book eight times in 563 min­utes against Aaronson’s five in 1,048 minutes.

Ripening Rapids

Bas­sett was the lead for a start­ing XI, which was the sec­ond youngest any team in the league has field­ed this sea­son with an aver­age age of 23.7 years. His goal marked the sixth time in sev­en match­es that a home­grown play­er has tal­lied a goal or an assist for the club.

Part of the rea­son for the sud­den youth turn is last week’s trade of vet­er­an strik­er Kei Kama­ra to Min­neso­ta. The Rapids were also with­out start­ing strik­er Diego Rubio and des­ig­nat­ed play­er Younes Nam­li in the mid­field. All of this makes their five-goal out­pour­ing all the more impressive.

“There are so many young play­ers who are pro­gress­ing,” Fras­er said. “The sched­ule is con­gest­ed, and we do have to make rota­tions and we’re try­ing to keep every­one as fresh as pos­si­ble. And you have guys who come in and obvi­ous­ly have done a real­ly good job.”

Jonathan Lewis, 23, also got on the board for the sec­ond-straight week, bring­ing his goal total to five on the sea­son. Reign­ing MLS Rook­ie of the Year Andre Shinyashi­ki notched his sec­ond goal in eight days and helped cre­ate San Jose’s own goal. Aus­ton Trusty, 22, added to the action nab­bing his first assist in burgundy.

“It speaks a great deal about not only the abil­i­ty of the team to step up but the spir­it of the team,” Fras­er said. “It’s great to see guys who are out of the line­up cheer­ing for guys who are in it.”

Where there’s a Will, there’s a way

The Rapids have record­ed clean sheets in each of William Yarbrough’s last three starts. This has boost­ed the Rapids to the third-best goal dif­fer­en­tial in the con­fer­ence. Goal dif­fer­en­tial is the sec­ond tiebreak­er behind wins, and with the west being so tight–six points sep­a­rate first from 11th place—this is already some­thing to .

The defense in front of Yarbrough has tight­ened, only allow­ing mul­ti­ple goals once in the past sev­en match­es. This will be a key come Sun­day as Sport­ing Kansas City and its high-pow­ered offense come to town.