Women's national team: stunning victory in America
Women's national team: stunning victory in America
Something happened in Berkeley that has never happened before: the Hungarian women's national team in the United States, next to American judges, won a confident 10-8 victory against the home team, who have won the last three Olympics and are defending the world championship. All this with nine action goals, in the discreet company of a total of three man advantages.
After Stanford, the two most recent World Cup finalists met in the swimming pool of another legendary American university, Berkeley - but that this game was going to be different from the last one, or any other two-goal game, was clear after about the first eight minutes. Instead of the usual American flying start, the Hungarian team swept: after two minutes, Rita Keszthelyi took the lead, then Kamilla Faragó scored the ball, and within just fifty seconds, she also scored a goal.
The Americans couldn't find an antidote to our zone defense, they couldn't force a single layup, and Alda Magyari got to all the balls that didn't die on the block. Towards the end, we got a chance that turned into a corner, but then we managed to get into a position with equal numbers, and Faragó checked again, that is, it was us who scalded their ass in the last seconds.
The 0-3- as start had its effect - the home team attacked us, they got the first goal after 10 seconds, and the second one a minute later, but Alda covered Steffens, and then Faragó made a great block. A little later, courtesy of Magyari, we managed to overcome the third disadvantage, and then halfway through the quarter thanks to the incredible performance of Kamilla Faragó, the score was 0-4.
In the end, the home team managed to score for the first time after an almost embarrassingly long struggle of 12:28 minutes, but in the best possible response, Rebecca Parkes scored from the center in the next attack, restoring the difference. They came back to 2-5 before halftime, after Musselman finally took advantage of their fourth chance.
In fact, a quick goal could almost have given them hope, but this evening Kamilla Faragó simply couldn't make a mistake. - he scored his fourth goal from his fourth shot, this time from a stray man advantage. We were already halfway through the quarter, when Musselman once again blasted a goal, but then we also missed one - but so did they, and so instead of minus one, it was three again, thanks to Gréta Gurisatti, who again scored from action (4-7) . Jenna Flynn again reduced the trailing distance by six to five, but 5-7 was still not a bad starting point for the last eight minutes. they could really smell the blood, that they only had to score one more goal. Parkes scored a goal from Keszthelyi's ideal pass in the 26th second, and although Fattal responded immediately, thanks to another save by Magyari, the clear difference remained until the next goal changes. Then, in the middle of the quarter, we got one-and-done again, Rita Keszthelyi scored a brilliant goal, which was countered by Fattal again, but Kriszta Garda's bomb was also hit, i.e. with 3:50 before the end, we led 10-7. This is where the home team broke completely, two minutes before the end, Roemer scored another goal - no more, because the last two they were sprinkled with were easily kicked out; they ended with an advantage of 11/4, we modestly with 3/1; that's all we got, so we managed to achieve the historic victory with nine goals. than what happened. We started very well, especially in defense, based on the statistics so far, we blocked an improbable amount, we were able to stay deep in the zone, which affected the play of their centers, and this gave us confidence that lasted until the end of the match. (Hungarian) Alda had a great start in goal, covering big ones at the beginning, this was a big boost for him as well as for the others. In attack, we played much more patiently, we succeeded in the last key passes so that we could really shoot from situations, and we also sold a good percentage of them. I'm not saying we took advantage of everything, but about seventy-five percent of the really good scoring opportunities. The key was that we didn't let them get behind us - we discussed this many times, during a thousand videos, that we have to pay attention to this, and we paid a lot of attention to this today, we forced them to shoot outside in the majority of cases when the defender was facing them. Let me tell you, we had to make a lot of mistakes in order for it to turn out like this today - but we could not make a bigger mistake than if we believed: ok, it worked out this way today, it will always be this way from now on. It was a great performance today and we'd like to believe it's the start of a bigger run, but we have to be aware of how much we're working towards and how much more we need to make it work later."
Preparatory match, Berkeley
United States-Hungary 8-10 (0-3, 2-2, 3-2, 2-2)
Hungarian goals: Faragó 4, Keszthelyi, Parkes 2-2, Gurisatti, Garda
