USA Men Fall to Spain in Tough Quarterfinal Game

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

Despite having lost their last three games in the preliminary round, Team USA Men’s Water Polo Team advanced to the quarterfinals in which they competed against Spain on Wednesday, August 4th. Given the low scoring percentage for the Americans in their previous few games, it was unknown how the team would fare. Sometimes though, the bigger the game, the more a team steps up.

“We expected a tough match against a tough opponent and that’s what we got. We were able to stick to the game plan pretty wellr,” said goalkeeper Alex Wolf.

In fact, Wolf played quite well as the game progressed. Neither he nor Spain’s goalkeeper, Daniel Lopez Pinedo, stopped anything that was thrown at them in the first quarter, which resulted in a tie game at three goals for each team.

For Team USA, the improvement in their scoring percentage, which was at 30% at the end of the game, gave insight into why for much of the game, the score was quite close—often just a goal difference for one team or the other.

Things were sticking to the game plan as Wolf said, though I am sure they would have liked to have capitalized on more of their extra player shots. They scored on five of the 15 shots they attempted when on the man advantage.

What definitely didn’t go to plan though was a lengthy delay for a video review in the fourth quarter. The Americans were trailing by a single goal, the only goal scored during the third quarter. At 6:08 of the fourth, Hannes Daube was whistled out for a centre forward exclusion. Nine seconds later, Ben Hallock received the same penalty—which for him was his third major foul. He was sent off and Luca Cupido was substituted for him and joined Daube in the re-entry araa. At 5:48, play in the pool stopped and a VAR (video) review was indicated.

The review took quite a few minutes, as the men of both teams were instructed to stay on their side of the middle line. There they stayed treading water while on the side there was discussion and viewing of something. And everyone waited.

“It’s an odd thing to happen. You really need to mentally reset. For me, I spent the whole time trying to reset, lock in and think about the next play,” said Wolf.

And the next play? Well, eventually, the game clock was reset to 5:53 and Cupido was assessed a penalty foul for apparently having exited the re-entry area before Hallock’s 20-second exclusion time was up. Spain was awarded their second penalty throw of the game, which Alberto Munarriz Egana put past Wolf. It seemed that the momentum that Team USA had been showing disappeared after that.

In the end Spain advanced to the semifinals and Team USA, despite a good game, were relegated to the classification games. Their first opponent will be Team Italy, a team they lost to in the preliminary round, who they will play on Friday, August 6th at 6:20pm JST.

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