NC Olympic roundup: Redemption for Ross; Gold for basketball; Silver for baseball
It was a busy Saturday in Tokyo for members of the U.S. Olympic Team with ties to North Carolina, with several medals on the line — and earned.
Perhaps the biggest win was for a team in a no-win situation from an early stage in the tournament, the men’s basketball team.
Heavily favored to begin the Games, the Americans dropped their first game of the tournament to France. Saturday, in the wee hours of the morning on the East Coast, the U.S. avenged that loss on the biggest of stages, bringing home its fourth consecutive gold medal, and 16th in 20 Olympic tournaments.
Saturday, again holding a late lead against France — as was the case in the opening loss — the U.S. held on to post an 87-82 win. A late inbounds play that left Kevin Durant wide open forced France to foul the USA’s all-time leading Olympic scorer. He drilled both free throws to salt the game away.
Durant finished with a team-high 29 points. Jayson Tatum had 19.
The U.S. again started slowly, but where it had taken a couple of quarters to snap out of their early funk in previous elimination games, the Americans, on the back of veteran Durant and some timely shooting from Tatum, turned the tide late in the first and early in the second quarter, turning an eight-point deficit into a double-digit lead. France closed a bit to finish the opening half, and the U.S. held a 44-39 lead at the break.
The Americans extended their lead in the third — barely — posting a 27-point quarter while holding France to 24 to push the lead to eight.
In addition to its 16 gold medals, the U.S. also has a silver and two bronze. The lone Olympic basketball tournament in which the U.S. did not win a medal was the 1980 edition when the Americans did not participate due to a boycott.
Another medal for USA Baseball
It wasn’t the gold, but USA Baseball brought home some hardware as the sport made a temporary return to the P;ympic program this year for the first time since 2008.
Japan’s pitching baffled the U.S. team all night Saturday, holding the Americans to six hits and, most importantly, no runs in a 2-0 win in the gold medal game.
Starter Masato Morishita went five innings for Japan, scattering three hits and striking out five.
Four pitchers each went one inning for Japan to close out the game.
Ryder Ryan, formerly of UNC, pitched one inning in relief for the U.S., walking one and striking out one.
The closest the U.S. came to scoring came in the seventh. Nick Allen poked a one-out double to center, and Jack Lopez moved him to third on a groundout. But Eddy Alvarez bounced to first base to end the threat.
The U.S. had a runner on again in the eight from the leadoff position when Tyler Austin singled to left, but Suguru Iwazaki came in to retire the next three American batters — including hot-hitting Triston Casas — to end that threat.
After Japan tacked on a second run in the bottom of the eighth on a pair of hits and a wild throw, the U.S. again put a runner on in the top of the ninth, and again it was Allen reaching on a single.
But Ryoji Kuribayashi shut the door, inducing a gold-medal-clinching groundout to second.
In the process of winning silver, Eddy Alvarez of the U.S. became just the sixth athlete ever to win a medal in both the summer and winter Olympics. He also earned a silver medal in 2014 with the 5,000-meter speed skating relay team.
Second chance — and gold — for Ross
Randolph Ross, who still owns a share of the fastest time in the 400-meter dash in 2021, had a disappointing showing in the individual 400 at the Tokyo Games earlier in the competition.
But he atoned for that in a big way this weekend. Ross, the NCAA 400-meter champion and part of the vaunted program at North Carolina A&T, ran the second leg of the men’s 4x400-meter relay on Friday, taking the handoff from NC A&T teammate Trevor Stewart and running a split of 44.56 seconds. Bryce Deadmon ran the third leg and Vernon Norwood had the anchor for the U.S., which won its heat in 2:57.77.
In the final on Saturday, Ross, Stewart and Norwood took a seat as the U.S. rolled out a fresh set of runners. Michael Cherry, Michael Norman, Deadmon and Rai Benjamin circled the track in 2:55.70, just .31 off an Olympic record in taking the gold medal, meaning Ross, Stewart and Norwood will also collect a gold medal for their part in qualifying.
Windle makes 10-meter platform final
Top U.S. diver Jordan Windle, making his Olympic debut, had a rollercoaster couple of days at the pool. In his first taste of competition in the 10-meter platform preliminaries on Friday, Windle sat in 21st position after four of six qualifying dives, but rallied with two stellar efforts in his fifth and sixth attempts to creep into 15th overall, just inside the 18-diver cutoff.
In the semifinal the next day, he overcame a subpar second dive — which dropped him into 17th of 18 and out of the final — with big scores on the fourth and sixth dives of the six-dive rotation ro rally into ninth position, earning a spot in the final.
With all of the scores erased and a clean slate in the 12-diver finale, Windle battled to a ninth-place finish in the final, overcoming a tough third dive to post one of the top dives of the competition in the fourth round to score an impressive 88.80. Windle’s six-dive total of 407.90 was 141 points shy of a medal..
“Overall I’m really happy,” said Windle. “I was happy just to make it to the final. My body wasn’t 100 percent but I was trying to just push through it and just try to stay healthy with the foods I was eating so overall, I was just really happy.”
USA Diving teammate Brandon Loschiavo also made the final in the event, placing 11th with a cumulative point total of 383.65.
Silver for Springsteen
The U.S. fell short of gold in a jumpoff with Sweden, but Duke grad (2014) Jessica Springsteen helped the Americans to the silver medal in the team jumping final Saturday.
Springsteen and teammates Laura Kraut and McLain Ward each moved cleanly through the shortened jump-off course and did so with a combined time of 124.2 seconds.
Peder Fredricson, the final Swedish rider, needed to circle the track in 40.30 seconds or better without error and cruised to a time of 39.01 for the country’s record fourth gold medal but first since 1924.
This story was originally published August 7, 2021 at 10:15 AM with the headline "NC Olympic roundup: Redemption for Ross; Gold for basketball; Silver for baseball."
