Match V Cuba

Coming into the match we saw Cuba as a must win game if wanted to progress through to the second round. Cuba had been smashed 3-0 Germany and seemed to be a bit of a hit and miss team. Unfortunatelly they hit more often than they missed in our game. It was clear from the start the Cubans came to play. From the start we were on the back foot going down 3-0, throughout the set we were able to close within 2, but the Cubans had the answers getting lots of big blocks by moving there hands around on block a lot (you can do that when your chest in on top of the net) They eventually took the set to 15.....embarrisingly.
The second set was just as bad. Down 8-3 at the technical after we couldnt side out on the setters jump float serve. Things improved a little over the course of the set but the Cubans continued to side out efficiently, hitting inside and over the top of the top of the block seemingly at will. Again the set was dissapointing. 25-19 to Cuba.
Much of the same in the 3rd set. We started better even going into the technical at 8-4 up. Unfortunatelly we couldn't keep it going. Andy Earl came on and played very well to keep us within range. Hitting some great kills and serving a few aces. However it wasn't enough and the Cubans won 25-20.
Well a very dissapointing game. The Cubans came to play that day and they showed this with 60% kill and 9% error on attack. Our game was not very smooth and we struggled big time to side out from serves that werent that difficult. Now we have a difficult test against the Brazilians after the rest day.