Asia Cup update
All in all the most important thing is to get the result that you want. and so far this Asia Cup we have achieved that by finishing top of our pool heading into the quarter finals. This is great as it gives us a quarter final against a weaker team, as well as hopefully a semi-final against the team that has finished 2nd in the other pool.
The matches we have played so far have been interesting to say the least. Our first match was against Kazakhstan, a team which plays much more our 'European' style of volleyball. We got off to a great start this match through some inspired serving from Adam White, and in the first set we were never headed to take it easily. As so often happens in volleyball the team that lost badly the previous set came out and played much better. The Kazakhs started well and we were always playing catch up until the end of the set when we made some better plays and stayed error free to take it 25-23. The 3rd set was close, but again we had the better plays at the end of the set to take a 3-0 win and a good start.
The 2nd match against Korea started pretty poorly, we were down early but fought back and again took the set 25-23. The 2nd was similar, except we started off the better, only to be run down and lose the set again 25-23. We seemed to have lost a lot of our energy during the 3rd, we were making a lot of chances from our block and defense, but we could not quite finish of the points we needed to take the lead. In the end it was again the Koreans who took the set 25-23.
We needed to win the 4th and we started well, taking an early lead with some great transition hitting from the outsides. We were challenged at stagesm but we kept our composure well and finished the set comfortably in the end.
The 5th set started real well, we won the first 2 points and quickly skipped out to a 7-4 lead. We had a golden opportunity to take an 8-4 lead, but a bad free ball pass cost us the point. This would cost us dearly in the end. We continued our good run to go 10-6 up. Then we tightened up. Essentially our inability to put the ball away coupled with some good Korean defense saw us quickly back at 10-10. Then it was a race to 5 and we picked a bad time to make a couple of hitting errors and before you know it Korea had match point at 14-12. We sided out, but Korea only needed one opportunity to finish the match and take it 15-13. It was a pretty disappointing match to lose. We easily out attacked and blocked them, as well as the passing being almost identical. We even scored more points than them, but clearly not at the correct time.
The 3rd match against Japan was in the end a soild win for us. It was 3-0 and although we were down in the 2nd and 3rd set, we stayed calm and knew that our block and defense would eventually get on top of them as the made some risky swings. The final block tally of 17-4 indicated that our plan worked a treat and it was a 3-0 win to finish off pool play.
To make things just that little bit sweeter Kazakhstan beat the Koreans 3-1 to put us into 1st place in the pool on points percentage with 3 teams finishing on 1 win. It was a closely fought pool with the Japanese losing 17-15 in the 5th to Korea who we lost too! So there could be some interesting quarter final results if some of the higher ranked teams relax a bit too much.
Today is a rest day and as we are in Iran there really is not a whole lot to do, it's dry and dusty and nobody really is venturing out into the street much as there is really not much around! (even though it is a city of 850,000 people) So I think the rest day will be ultimately used for rest. We again have the early 10am start tomorrow against Taiwan. So hopefully that doesn't cause us too much trouble and we can be fresh for a semi final show down against either Kazakhstan or China!
The matches we have played so far have been interesting to say the least. Our first match was against Kazakhstan, a team which plays much more our 'European' style of volleyball. We got off to a great start this match through some inspired serving from Adam White, and in the first set we were never headed to take it easily. As so often happens in volleyball the team that lost badly the previous set came out and played much better. The Kazakhs started well and we were always playing catch up until the end of the set when we made some better plays and stayed error free to take it 25-23. The 3rd set was close, but again we had the better plays at the end of the set to take a 3-0 win and a good start.
The 2nd match against Korea started pretty poorly, we were down early but fought back and again took the set 25-23. The 2nd was similar, except we started off the better, only to be run down and lose the set again 25-23. We seemed to have lost a lot of our energy during the 3rd, we were making a lot of chances from our block and defense, but we could not quite finish of the points we needed to take the lead. In the end it was again the Koreans who took the set 25-23.
We needed to win the 4th and we started well, taking an early lead with some great transition hitting from the outsides. We were challenged at stagesm but we kept our composure well and finished the set comfortably in the end.
The 5th set started real well, we won the first 2 points and quickly skipped out to a 7-4 lead. We had a golden opportunity to take an 8-4 lead, but a bad free ball pass cost us the point. This would cost us dearly in the end. We continued our good run to go 10-6 up. Then we tightened up. Essentially our inability to put the ball away coupled with some good Korean defense saw us quickly back at 10-10. Then it was a race to 5 and we picked a bad time to make a couple of hitting errors and before you know it Korea had match point at 14-12. We sided out, but Korea only needed one opportunity to finish the match and take it 15-13. It was a pretty disappointing match to lose. We easily out attacked and blocked them, as well as the passing being almost identical. We even scored more points than them, but clearly not at the correct time.
The 3rd match against Japan was in the end a soild win for us. It was 3-0 and although we were down in the 2nd and 3rd set, we stayed calm and knew that our block and defense would eventually get on top of them as the made some risky swings. The final block tally of 17-4 indicated that our plan worked a treat and it was a 3-0 win to finish off pool play.
To make things just that little bit sweeter Kazakhstan beat the Koreans 3-1 to put us into 1st place in the pool on points percentage with 3 teams finishing on 1 win. It was a closely fought pool with the Japanese losing 17-15 in the 5th to Korea who we lost too! So there could be some interesting quarter final results if some of the higher ranked teams relax a bit too much.
Today is a rest day and as we are in Iran there really is not a whole lot to do, it's dry and dusty and nobody really is venturing out into the street much as there is really not much around! (even though it is a city of 850,000 people) So I think the rest day will be ultimately used for rest. We again have the early 10am start tomorrow against Taiwan. So hopefully that doesn't cause us too much trouble and we can be fresh for a semi final show down against either Kazakhstan or China!
After the match against Japan we were invited on a hr drive down to have dinner with the mayor, essentially it was all the same food, and we ate for 20 minutes...so again a complete waste of time. However as we were waiting for the other teams to arrive we stumbled across an outdoor gym that we all took great advantage of!
posted by Nathan @ 10:16 AM
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