American winning streak ends with Serbian victory in FIVB World Grand Prix
The United States side was going on a winning streak until Sunday, 14th August when they suffered a defeat at the hands of the Serbian squad in a FIVB World Grand Prix match.
The match took place at Park Arena in Komaki, Japan and went on for four sets.
The first set of the game was one sided as the Serbians dominated the Americans completely and won the set by a significant margin. The Americans bounced back in the second set and handed out an effective defeat to the Serbians.
However, that was the only time that the Americans could muster a win in the match as the next two were bagged by the Serbians. Despite the fact that the Americans played the third set well, Serbia grabbed a win and won the fourth one by quite a margin making
the scoreboard show the following final set scores: 25-12, 17-25, 25-23 and 25-15.
The Serbian coach, Zoran Terzic, expressed himself in the following words at the press conference after the match reached its close, “Today we played one the best games in recent times...Usually, if a team tries to play like that they make a lot of mistakes.
But we didn't do that today and that's why we were able to win.”
On the other hand, the American coach Hugh McCutcheon shared his feelings by stating, “Congratulations to Serbia; they played a very strong game today, especially in service and they attacked well in transition. As always, we are trying to get better and
Serbia taught us a few things tonight.”
The American side let the advantage slip to the Serbians at 11-6 in the first set of the game. Serbia was able to capitalise on the momentum generated and take the lead up to 18-9. Before long, the Serbians had bagged the opening set of the game at 25-12.
The second set was tied at 8-8 but the Americans were able to move up ahead at 13-10. The Serbians kept trailing while the Americans were able to take their advantage forward and grab a win at 25-17.
The third started tough and got into a tie at 9-9 but the Serbians were leading at 16-13 and they ended it on their terms at 25-23. After that, the fourth set was a relatively easy win for the Serbians as they stuck to the lead all through and ended the
set at 25-15.
Their recent win has enabled the Serbians to show a total of four wins as opposed to two losses while the Americans are now down to five victories at the cost of a fresh loss.
The player that was able to tally the most points in both the teams was the Serbian Jovana Brakocevic as she registered a total of 22 points.
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