SAN ANTONIO — When Shogo Oshima started playing lacrosse as a goalie at the University of Tokyo, he would watch videos of American shooters like Will Manny and envision making saves against them.
In Japan, Oshima explained, the U.S. national team consists of players to be emulated, but not necessarily defeated. He would like to help change that perception.
“We respect them and copy their plays. They’re like our textbooks,” Oshima said. “By this game, we let people know that Team USA is not just a textbook. They are people we have to play against and beat. This was a good step toward that.”
Speaking through an interpreter, Oshima smiled as he considered what the Japanese national team had just accomplished Saturday — nearly upsetting the U.S. and its star-studded cast of professional players in the Spring Premiere at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio.
Japan scored three first-quarter goals and led 5-3 going into the fourth quarter. It frustrated the U.S. with long, sustained possessions punctuated by precision shooting. On defense, Japan refused to slide and left it up to Oshima and Takahiro Suzuki to stop midrange shots and anything from the alleys.
The game plan, finely tuned for international rules that do not govern possession time with a shot clock and reward teams that exercise patience, worked almost to perfection.
Almost.
The U.S. rallied just in time, scoring four goals in the final seven minutes to defeat Japan 8-5.
“We bent,” Manny said, “but we didn’t break.”
Faceoff specialist Stephen Kelly, one of 11 players making their U.S. senior team debuts, won the opening faceoff of the fourth quarter and plunged forward to score, pulling the U.S. within one.
Still, Japan seemed content to sit on a 5-4 lead until a mishandled pass by Makoto Iguchi with 7:45 remaining — one of the few unforced errors for Japan — finally gave the U.S. an opening.
Team USA capitalized on the turnover, as Jules Heningburg, after hitting the post on a shot, took a Deemer Class feed through X and converted to tie the game at 5.
A minute later, Manny put the U.S. ahead on a fluky play in which he caught a pass from Heningburg crosshanded and fumbled the ball into the goal.
“After I pump-faked, I went to go to the shovel shot, and it got caught in my glove. It flew out of my stick and went into the goal,” Manny said. “Not the prettiest, but I’ll take it.”
Manny added an insurance goal with 3:46 remaining, and then John Crawley iced the win with 10 seconds left.
That the U.S. required such fortune to put away the pesky Japanese is at least in part due to the inspired play of Oshima and Suzuki between the pipes. Shinya Tateishi and Tomoki Umehara, meanwhile, scored two goals apiece.
Asked how friends and family would receive the news of their performance back home, Suzuki replied, “They will be surprised by the score and our effort.”
It wasn’t all ugly for the U.S., which blanked Japan for the final 21:47 and held its ground on several marathon possessions.
“These rules man, these international rules — it’s a completely different game,” Manny said. “Credit the defense for holding them to one goal in the second half.”
Suzuki said visualization played a key role in both goalies’ performance.
“We have an image of the shooters and the tendency of their shots,” he said. “In Japan, we don’t see shots like those. So the imagination was important.”
Imagine what the response in the American lacrosse community might have been had Japan held on to win.
Manny cautioned against reading too much into Team USA’s performance during the first three quarters, citing several hit pipes and the myriad of player combinations with which the U.S. coaches toyed.
“You could see guys learning on the fly, adjusting and adapting,” Manny said.
The pace figures to pick up Sunday, when the U.S. returns to Benson Stadium for a Blue-White exhibition to culminate the Spring Premiere. Faceoff is at 10:30 a.m. Central (11:30 a.m. Eastern) and the game will be streamed live on Lax Sports Network.