Men’s Water Polo Close Out Preliminary Round with a Loss

(Photo: Jeff Cable, Jeff Cable’s Photography Blog)

The USA Men’s Water Polo Team came into their bout with Greece having lost their previous two games, first to Italy and then to Hungary. They were in fourth place and despite the outcome of the game against Greece, they would still have be in fourth place, given that the tie between Italy and Hungary in the game before that of Team USA gave Italy eight points while Hungary had seven. With a win, the most the USA could get would have been six. Meanwhile, Greece was sitting at seven points going into the game and needed the win to maintain the first seed in Group A.

Despite Johnny Hooper coming out fast at the start of the quarters—winning three of the four sprints for the Americans to get initial possession, they weren’t able to capitalize on those opportunities. Greece on the other hand was up two goals with 4:17 remaining in the first period and would keep that pressure up throughout the game.

Alex Bowen did put the Americans on the scoreboard at 3:52 of the opening quarter while the team was on the extra player. Throughout the game, Bowen attempted a total of ten shots, five of those while on the man advantage, and it was only that goal in the first quarter that actually went in.

Once again Team USA was able to draw the exclusions, but they seemed to struggle even more in this game against Greece to take advantage of the power play. Two days ago they converted on 31% , while in Monday’s game against Greece, they were only able to score on two of the 11 chances they had for just 18%. That was definitely not what they were hoping for. Meanwhile the Greeks, though they only had eight extra player opportunities, put home four of them.

Many of Team USA’s shots seemed off—going too high so that they went over the net or missing the net on the sides. Even their shots that looked good seemed to hit posts and stay out. Of the 29 shots attempted by the American players, only 15 made it to Greece’s goalkeeper, Emmanouil Zerdevas, and he denied ten of those for a save percentage of 67%. Drew Holland, on the other hand, saw 21 shots and was only able to save seven of them giving him a save percentage of 33%. To be fair, two of those shots were penalty shots to go with the four extra player shots Greece scored on.

The Americans certainly had to know that Greece was going to bring all it had in the game with so much at stake for them. Perhaps it was just one of those games where somehow communication is off or the ball just refuses to bounce off the posts the right way to get past the goalkeeper and into the back of the net. Whatever the reason, Greece won with a resounding 14 goals to USA’s 5.

For Team USA, despite having lost their past three games, they will advance to the quarter finals which will take place on Wednesday, August 4th. At present, it looks like they will have to play Spain, who won all five of their games in the preliminary round in their group.

Note: If you love the photo, be sure to check out more by visiting Jeff Cable’s Photography Blog here.