FIVB Women's Volleyball Championship second round recap: Tuesday's Pool F matches part one
The second round of the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) Women's Volleyball World Championship continued on Tuesday. The top two teams from each pool, E and F, will advance to the semi-finals
with a chance to play for the championship. The third to sixth place teams will play for positions 4-12, and the teams that finish seventh and eighth in each pool will be eliminated from the tournament.
Brazil vs Germany Pool F
Brazil improved to 6-0, and clinched a top two finish in Pool F with a 3-0 (25-16, 25-13, 25-21) win over Germany, who saw their record fall to 3-3. Germany, ranked 15th in the world, will not
qualify for the 1-4 position semi-finals. A fourth place finish would earn them a spot in the 5-8 position semi-finals, but they’ll have to beat the Netherlands on Wednesday to solidify that position.
Leading the scoring for Brazil was Natalia Pereira with 20 points. Corina Ssuschke led German players with eight.
Germany never really had much of a chance against a strong Brazilian squad in the first two sets, but they were tied at 18 in the third set before Brazil took the lead on a powerful spike from Pereira
which put them up 19-18. An inspired team went on to win that set 25-21.
“Brazil is playing very good volleyball. It is tough to put the ball on the floor with them,” said Germany’s coach Giovanni Guidetti. “They have good blocking and attacking. I think they will be world
champions.”
Netherlands vs USA Pool F
The United States improved to 5-1 with a 3-0 (25-17, 25-22, 25-18) victory over the Dutch. The Americans have not officially clinched second place in the pool, but they hold a one game lead on Italy, and
have a better points differential ratio, which would be used as a tiebreaker should the teams tie. The Dutch fell to 2-4, and will have to beat Germany by a large margin to move into fourth spot and have a chance to play for the 5-8 positions in the semi-finals.
Leading the U.S. team in scoring was Destinee Hooker, who scored 20 points, and had three blocks. She scored nine points in the first set alone, leading the Americans to a 25-17 win. Netherlands’ top
scorer was Maret Grothues with 10 points.
The Dutch played hard, but were only close to the Americans in the second set which was tied 22-22 before the Americans scored three straight points to win.
“The U.S. deserved to win,” said Avital Selinger, coach of the Netherlands. “They dominated at the net and on defence. We were not able to play our game. We had trouble on the rhythm of our attack and
were on the defensive most of the time.”
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