Rematch of 2005 championship is set

After beating Japan, 11-0, on Sunday, the U.S. will meet the same team today.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Jessica Mendoza homered and drove in four runs and Crystl Bustos and Tairia Flowers each added two-run shots, lifting the United States past Japan 11-0 Sunday at the World Cup of Softball.
The teams will meet again today in the championship, a rematch of last year's final.
While both teams held back their aces, there was no holding back the U.S. offense. Mendoza, who has a tournament-high 15 RBIs, started the scoring with a bloop single down the left-field line to score Natasha Watley.
A screamer
Bustos then lined a screamer over the left field wall to give the U.S. a 3-0 lead.
Watley added a two-run triple in the fourth, and Mendoza followed by slamming her third home run of the World Cup. Japanese fielders turned but didn't move as the ball caromed off the warning track in front of a wall 300 feet from home plate and hopped over.
Flowers capped a six-run inning with another blast to left field off Juri Takayama (0-1), a three-time Olympic medal winner. Mendoza also had an RBI single and Bustos a run-scoring sacrifice fly in the fifth.
This game had been on the Americans' minds since last year, when Japan (4-1) upset the three-time Olympic gold medal winners in the World Cup title game.
The U.S. (5-0) had beaten Japan 7-0 in a preliminary round game last year but then dropped the World Cup title game 3-1. Japan scored two early runs against Cat Osterman and Yukiko Ueno threw a three-hitter.
The Americans lost a pair of games to the Japanese at the Japan Cup, including the championship game, when Ueno outdueled Jennie Finch in a 3-0 win.
Dating back to last year's World Cup, Ueno -- who pitched the first perfect game in Olympic history at the 2004 Athens Games -- has held the Americans scoreless for 22 innings while allowing only nine hits and striking out 28.
Neither she nor Osterman were in the circle for this game.
Alicia Hollowell (1-0), recovering from a forearm injury suffered after she won the Women's College World Series at Arizona, pitched around three first-inning singles with the help of a slick play by Flowers.
Flowers, the first baseman, fielded Eri Yamada's bunt on one bounce and fired to third base to prevent the Japanese from putting two runners in scoring position with one out.
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