MELBOURNE, Australia, March 31. IN the gold-medal match in front of a hostile crowd of partisan fans, the United States women's water polo squad completed a thrilling 6-5 conquest of host Australia at the FINA World Championships.<\/p>\n
After battling back to tie the match, 1-1, heading into halftime when the U.S. had trailed 1-0 after the first quarter, the Americans won a decisive third quarter 4-3 to take a lead heading into the fourth and final frame. The U.S. answered Australia 1-1 in the last quarter to complete a remarkable run in the championships.<\/p>\n
Lauren Wenger led the American with three goals, while the Australians relied on a balanced scoring attack as Nikita Cuffe, Suzannah Fraser, Kate Gynther, Bronwen Knox and Melissa Rippon each tallied a goal.<\/p>\n
U.S. goalie Elizabeth Armstrong faced 17 shots and posted 12 saves for a 70.6 percent average. Meanwhile, Australian netminder Emma Knox came up just short as she saved 11 out of 17 shots for a 64.7 percent average.<\/p>\n
3rd-Place Match<\/b>
\nRussia claimed third place with a 9-8 victory over Hungary. Natalia Shepelina connected three times to lead Russia, while Mercedes Stieber paced Hungary with a hat trick of her own.<\/p>\n
5th-Place Match<\/b>
\nItaly doubled up Canada, 7-3, for fifth place in the tournament. Silvia Bosurgi led the way for Italy with a hat trick, while Marina Radu posted two of Canada's goals.<\/p>\n
7th-Place Match<\/b>
\nSpain picked up an 11-9 win over Greece to claim seventh place. Jennifer Pareja torched the Greek defense with an astonishing seven goals, while teammate Blanca Gil recorded three goals. Antigoni Roumpesi, Stavroula Antonakou and Georgia Lara paced Greece with two goals each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MELBOURNE, Australia, March 31. IN the gold-medal match in front of a hostile crowd of partisan fans, the United States women's water polo squad completed a thrilling 6-5 conquest of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[53777],"class_list":["post-14441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz","tag-2007-fina-world-championships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n