Disrespect

Just a few days ago, I told you about one of the best experiences I have ever had as a player or as a coach with our national anthem. Today, was possibly the worst experience. As our Star Spangled Banner was played prior to the start of the game, a loud and rowdy group of Serbian fans began to whistle and boo as they held up banners that referred back to their civil war. I have attached a picture which was taken of the banners by our team leader. It was extremely disrespectful and made me very upset. They whistled and booed so loud that you could hardly hear our anthem.

At the opening sprint, I would have to say that my blood pressure was high and my face was red with anger. Unfortunately, the game did not go much better. After playing reasonably well in the first period we kind of fell apart and got out of our rhythm. We committed 7 offensive fouls and turned the ball over on numerous bad passes. We were out of sync and the time away from each other looked like it was getting the best of us. Our sloppy play definitely fed into the Serbian’s strength. The countered us hard and if it wasn’t for a good game by Merrill Moses, the score could have been very lopsided.

As it turned out we hung around and with about two minutes left scored a goal to bring the score to 9 – 7 in favor of Serbia. Unfortunately, we gave up a goal on the very next possession and Serbia went on to win 10 – 7. The story of the game was really our uncharacteristic sloppy play. We gave up 2 goals from their center and 3 goals on their counter attack. These are two of our cardinal rules. We do not give up goals on the counter and we do not give up goals from center. I would have to say that this was one of the uglier games that we have played as a team since I began coaching 2 years ago. It was not pretty and we will have to change the way we play in order to have a successful outcome here. We are still very much in the tournament, in fact we could still win the whole tournament.

Tomorrow, we begin play in the elimination round. We will play Australia in what is essentially the quarterfinals. The winner will move on to face Montenegro on Saturday in the semis. Australia actually gave Montenegro a pretty good game tonight. They ended up losing by a score of 6 – 4 but had numerous opportunities to make the game even closer. The bottom line is that we need to get back to doing the simple things well. This needs to begin with good defense and good legs. We were pushed around a little tonight and the Serbs pressure forced our sloppy play. We made numerous passing errors and our 6 on 5 was not strong. We were 3 for 8 on our extra man attempts.

Everyone is disappointed. We are not used to losing so we all had our heads down a bit. Tomorrow we will rally the troops and get back on a winning track. Go USA!

We can do this…

See you at the pool.

Coach