CLOSE CALL: U.S. women’s water polo coach Adam Krikorian shouts during an 11-9 win against Australia yesterday. Krikorian called a timeout late in the game with his team not having possession, causing a penalty shot (inset) that sent the game into overtime. (
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LONDON — The ball ricocheted hard off the crossbar, high into the out-of-bounds water, and all at once you could hear the relieved sighs and bitter gasps of 5,000 people inside the Water Polo Arena, and then the inevitable chants of “U! S! A!”

There was one second left in this Olympic semifinal match, the Americans clung to a 9-8 lead, and because they hadn’t touched the ball on its way to the goal and beyond it was their possession. The match was over. They were going to the gold-medal game. Seven American women flashed winning smiles, their Australian counterparts looking glum and beaten.

What nobody noticed was one American coach who didn’t look nearly as happy as his players did.

“WHAAAAAAAT?” you could see him plead.

And then Adam Krikorian hung his head, and shook it, and everyone else had the same question.

Soon enough, we had the answer. In his excitement to organize his team after the wild last-second flurry, Krikorian had asked for a timeout before they’d officially been awarded possession. Now, Krikorian has been around the pool a few times. He’s won 14 NCAA championships as a player, an assistant, and a head coach at UCLA.

“I didn’t think I called a bad timeout,” Krikorian said, “but it’s not my judgment to make.”

That was his heart starting to break, though, as he realized what it all meant: Australia would have a free shot to tie the game with one second left on the clock. Naturally, Glencora Ralph skipped the ball past U.S. goalie Betsey Armstrong, the game was tied, and suddenly the “U! S! A! chants were replaced with “Oi! Oi! Oi!” cries.

“After a while you learn that everyone makes mistakes,” Krikorian would say. “Even coaches. Even coaches mess up.”

Of course this was a judgment call. The timeout might have come before the ball officially splashed in the water. Or it might have come later. Was the referee really watching? Was there really enough video evidence to overturn? Well, this is the Olympics. Maybe you can ask Doug Collins or Bobby Jones or Kevin Joyce how well officials can manage the ends of games at the Olympics?

The coach was heartsick, so cowed by the call that during the five-minute break before the start of extra time, he gathered his players around him and … couldn’t say anything. So the players perked up.

“Hey, we’re here anyway,” Melissa Seidemann told her teammates. “Let’s play hard for six more minutes and have some fun.”

“We practice for these high-pressure situations,” Kami Craig said. “What’s the big deal?”

There were a couple of them. The Americans had won back-to-back world championships in 2007 and ’09 before fizzling to sixth in 2011. They have won two silvers and a bronze since the sport was added to the Olympics in 2000, never gold. And this was Australia; whenever the red, white and blue faces the green and gold in any body of water, there is likely to be blood — and maybe a few teeth — bobbing in the H20.

“It’s a great rivalry,” Lauren Wenger said. “They bring it, we bring it. It’s always going to be a great game.”

“And exhausting,” Armstrong said.

That’s part of why Krikorian was so devastated. He’s played the game. He knows the size of will necessary to last 32 minutes in the water with opponents who view drowning as incidental contact. Now he was asking his team to play 38? Because of him?

But as he looked at his players looking at each other, he realized: They weren’t affected. Hell, a few of them probably relished the chance at six more minutes to even a few under-the-water scores. So he re-gathered himself, and then re-gathered the team.

“No doubt in my mind,” he said, “that we’ll be fine.”

And, it turns out, they were. Maggie Steffens scored halfway through the first three-minute session, and Craig added another. The second overtime was essentially four corners in the water. There were no more end-game dramatics. The final was 11-9. The gold medal game is tomorrow night against Spain. The coach could breathe again.

“Sometimes the coach can let you down and the players need to pick you up,” Krikorian said, oozing grace and accountability with the world watching. “We just wanted a happy ending.”

Forty years after Aleksander Belov at the buzzer, the Americans got one.