SOFTBALL: United States 3 – Japan 0

ATHENS – One day after watching the United States suffer the biggest upset in the history of the men’s Olympic basketball competition, the U.S. softball team barely avoided what would have been the biggest stunner in the history of that event, too.

For 7 1/3 innings, Japan’s Juri Takayama kept the Americans’ vaunted bats silent, no-hitting an American team that has won every international gold medal contested across the last 18 years, including all three Olympics.

But a Kelly Kretschman sacrifice fly in the eighth inning opened the door, and the Americans followed with two more runs for a 3-0 victory to hold off the team they defeated to win the gold in Sydney in 2000.

Luckily for the Americans, who won their first two games by a combined 17-0 and have still yet to allow a run in this tournament, Cat Osterman was even more stingy than Tayama, allowing only one hit in eight innings of work, and proving that Jennie Finch isn’t the only U.S. pitcher with world-beating stuff.

“I was going to keep plugging away and doing my job until we scored,” said Osterman, who pitches for the University of Texas. “The way this team goes, we find a way to win. So I was just trying to keep us in the game, and that approach worked.”

Neither pitcher allowed a hit until Japan’s Noriko Yamaji scratched out a single. Neither team could push a runner into scoring position until the eighth when, as mandated by Olympic extra-inning rules, each team placed a runner on second leading off the inning.

The U.S. was hitting .458 heading into the game but couldn’t figure Takayama out at all.

“It was fun watching her work,” Osterman said. “I didn’t think either of us was ever going to give in.”

But after the Americans reached Takayama in the eighth, Osterman closed the door in the ninth, finishing off an 11-strikeout masterpiece that must have the world muttering about this Drysdale to Finch’s Koufax.

“I’ve said this for a long time: This kid is special,” U.S. coach Mike Candrea said. “She spins the ball, she has a lot of break, she’s poised. I’ve faced her a bunch of times; it’s better to have her on my team.”