Asian Games women's volleyball recap: Japan and Kazakhstan open with wins
The women’s volleyball preliminary round started on Thursday at the Asian Games in China. There were five matches, putting 10 of the 11 teams in action. Group A has five teams while Group B has six. Mongolia,
a Group A team, was the only team to not play on Thursday.
The men ended their preliminary round on Wednesday and had no matches scheduled on Thursday. They’ll begin their placement round on Friday.
The top eight teams after the preliminary round will advance to the quarter-finals and playoff for the gold medal while the other three teams will play to determine their ranking between 9 and 11.
Taiwan vs Japan Group B
The closest match in the first day of action was between Taiwan and Japan with Japan winning 3-2 (19-25 25-17 24-26 25-17 17-15).
Rika Nomoto was the top scorer for Japan with 27 points, and Saki Minemura was close behind her with 20. Taiwan’s top scorer was Yen Min Teng, who had 18 points.
The match took almost two hours to complete as the teams went to extra points in the fifth set. It was a back-and-forth battle all match. Taiwan took an early 1-0 lead with a 25-19 victory in the first
set, but Japan countered with a strong win in the second set. Taiwan won the third set in extra points to take a 2-1 lead, but again Japan bounced back, taking the fourth set 25-17. Japan won an exciting fifth set 17-15.
Japan had a huge 13 aces, five of them from Saki Minemura, to Taiwan’s six, and they won the block battle 8-6.
Japan will face North Korea on Friday, and Taiwan will play their next match against Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan vs Maldives Group B
In other Group B action, Kazakhstan crushed Maldives in straight sets (25-7 25-6 25-3). Maldives didn’t have a chance against a superior Kazakhstan team in a match that lasted a mere 49 minutes.
Two players scored in the double digits for Kazakhstan, Inna Matveyeva had 13 points while Yuliya Kutsko had 11. Maldives’ top scorer was Aishath Nazima, who was the only player on the team to score more
than one point. She had two.
Kazakhstan dominated in every statistical category; they had 41 spikes to Maldives’ three, they won the block battle 5-0, they had an incredible 18 aces while Maldives had two, and they had 22 digs to
Maldives zero.
Kazakhstan’s next match is against Taiwan. Maldives will play their next match against India.
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