The U.S. women's water polo team allowed more goals on Monday than it has allowed in any single game over the last three Olympics, falling 13-11 to Spain.
Ashleigh Johnson saved 50% of Spain's shots after saving 71% of shots in a Game 1 win over Greece. The Team USA keeper still finished with 13 saves, her second straight game of double-digit stops.
The U.S. only allowed more than 10 goals twice in the Tokyo Olympics, once in Rio 2016, and twice in London 2012. The last time they allowed 13 goals in the Olympics was in their 2012 opener, a win over Hungary. They won gold in all three tournaments.
“Spain played fabulous," said USA coach Adam Krikorian. "They are one of the best teams. They have some of the best players in the world. I'm not surprised, not shocked at all.
"It feels great, but this is not the goal of the tournament," said Spain's Anni Espar Llaquet. "It was an important game and we want to try to get ranked first in the group, but this means nothing... It's just a win and just a win against a great team, and just gives us some confidence to keep playing like that.”
Trailing by one at the end of the first, Spain came back to take a 6-5 lead at the half. It was the third quarter when the Spanish squad took over. They scored four goals in less than four minutes to take an 11-6 lead. Tara Prentice, Maddie Musselman, and Jenna Flynn all scored for Team USA, but they still trailed, 11-9, going into the fourth.
“That quarter was very important for us to go ahead and give us the belief we could win, but then we also need to correct some mistakes we had in the fourth quarter where we let them come back," Espar said. “When you're up by five and the other team is coming back, it's like they couldn't score for a while, and then when they scored it looked like it was easy for them to score again."
Johnson struggled in net in the third, but came in strong in the fourth as the U.S. defense tightened up. Johnson had a deflection to keep a Spanish penalty shot out of the net, and the U.S. immediately responded with a goal by Kaleigh Gilchrist to get within one.
It was for nothing, though. Spanish keeper Martina Terre stopped a USA penalty shot with less than three minutes remaining and her team held the Americans scoreless for more than five-and-a-half minutes for the win.
"I like penalties," Terre said. "They scored their first two, but the third one was my chance to finally stop that ball. I was grateful to save it, but I'm critical of myself. I need to be better and save more balls in the future.”
“I’m incredibly proud of how we came back, but I wasn't pleased with how we handled being down there in the first place," Krikorian said. “We got away from what the plan was. We stopped trusting each other a bit, and that's how they were able to widen the gap."
Defender Jordan Raney was the only American with multiple goals, finishing with two. Nine other players added one goal each. Beatriz Ortiz had a tournament-high five goals for Spain. Maica Garcia added two.
The hope of winning a fourth straight gold is far from over for Team USA (1-1), which also lost a game in pool play during the 2020 Games. Each group has five teams, and the top four move on to the knockout round after four games.
Krikorian's team will next face Italy (0-1) on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Spain will play immediately after when they take on Greece at 2:05 p.m. ET.
“It's a long tournament," Krikorian said. "We've got to learn from it and hopefully, if we get in that situation again, we can be a bit more poised.”