USA fronted cutters and swarmed marks to exploit their advantages against China.
August 14, 2025 by Josh Katz in Analysis, Recap
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Thanks to results over the first two days, Thursday’s matchup between the USA and China was meaningless on paper: Team USA was guaranteed to finish atop Pool A, and China was locked into fourth place. In reality, however, there was much to play for. China had a home crowd to impress against the five time reigning champions, while the USA certainly wanted to put together a more comprehensive performance after their upset scare against Germany. Armed with a devastating defensive gameplan and a wealth of athleticism, the Americans put together a comprehensive victory to remain unbeaten heading into the semifinals.
In their first two games, China showcased a variety of different offensive looks, effectively blending the small ball and deep look offenses and looking more than competent in the process. They hadn’t yet run into a defense of the USA’s caliber, and it was evident from the first point that Team USA was a different beast altogether. The Americans sold out on removing every small ball look for China, trusting that their athleticism would win out when China sent the disc downfield.
Dylan Freechild, Carolyn Finney, and Dawn Culton are playing aggressively underneath their matchups, refusing to get beat on an under cut. Thanks to a strong mark from Michael Ing and a stagnant reset cutter, Xin Li is forced to look deep, but Freechild’s closing speed is more than enough for him to get back in position and get an easy block.
[INSERT FREECHILD GETTING THE BLOCK CLIP]
It wasn’t just the underneath defenders catching up that were getting blocks either, as the downfield defenders were readily alert and available to poach off when needed. Late in the game, Kaela Helton was especially insistent on not getting beat under, leaving Simei Wei plenty of space to cut towards the end zone. Zhaoje Zhou took the seemingly open look, but the disc floated enough to give Ing plenty of time to race over for the block.
The marks on the disc were also extremely active, making constant resets a difficult proposition as well. On the USA’s second defensive point, Grant Lindsley did just enough to disrupt Quan Mao’s breakside swing pass, leading to an overthrow and a break. On the ensuing point, Finney positioned herself just in between two handlers off of the pull, and her quick hands gave her the easy block off of a centering pass, leading to another quick break and an immediate 4-0 lead for the USA.
[INSERT FINNEY BLOCK AT 19:10]
This isn’t to say that there aren’t things for Team USA to clean up if they want to use this look again in the medal rounds. When China was able to fastbreak in this matchup, the US struggled to get back into position and stop things from spiraling out of control.
Once China got a couple passes completed up the force sideline, the entire US position broke down. With everyone (outside of Ing) playing under their matchup, both Anqi Zhou and Yingyi Xu are able to take off downfield. Ing does enough to deter the deeper look to Zhou, at the expense of conceding another 15 or so yards on the force sideline that Xu eagerly accepts. But Chris Kocher can’t recover fast enough to set a mark, forcing a similarly-recovering Claire Trop to abandon a streaking Jiarong Guo and stop the disc. Ing, once again in an impossible situation, picks up Guo, leaving Zhou all alone for the score. Against a French side that will likely be more effective at setting up and attacking from these sorts of positions, the US will need to be quicker at recovering in the fast break.
