Japan claims 11th spot after defeating Cuba 3-0: FIVB Volleyball Women’s Junior World Championship
The Japanese side was able to secure themselves the 11th position in the FIVB Volleyball Women’s Junior World Championship by beating the Cubans on Sunday, July 31. The match between the two sides was fairly one sided as the Japanese got themselves
the win after making a clean sweep over their opponents.
The first and the second sets saw the Japanese stay dominant for the most part. The Cubans came to life in the third set of the game but the effort came in too late to stop the Japanese from sealing the deal in the match at the following final set scores:
25-19, 25-13 and 25-22.
The Japanese captain, Mari Horikawa, expressed her happiness at winning the match in the following words at the press conference: "We are very glad over the victory. We defended too much and we wanted to be aggressive in the attack. Their height was a problem,
but we really wanted to win. I feel that we were very concentrated and that helped us a lot."
On the other hand, the Cuban coach, Wilfredo Robinson, gave the following statements: "I congratulate Japan because they made a great match. They were very aggressive in the service and we got complication on the reception. They could defend all our attacks
and their victory is well deserved".
The opening set of the game saw the Japanese take the lead early on as the Cubans struggled with their reception. Largely due to the repeated errors made by the Cubans, the gap between the scores of the Japanese and Cuba kept enlarging which made it easy
for Japan to lead the game all the way through. Despite the fact that the Cubans got their reception under control, it was too late to stop the Japanese from going towards a win at 25-19.
The second set of the game went in favour of the Japanese as they were able to perform well by capitalising on the momentum built at winning the first set. Not only that, the Cubans did not learn from the previous loss and fell to making errors in the second
set as well. As the Cubans made errors on service as well as reception, the Japanese side of the score board kept on ticking. The set reached its close as the spike of Horikawa landed on the Cuban side of the court, giving the Japanese another win at 25-13.
The Cubans started to show some fight at the start of the third set of the game but the Japanese squad proved to be the better side as it was not long before Cuba was committing errors again. It did not take the Japanese long to secure the third and the
final set at 25-22.
The player that scored the most points for the Japanese was Fumika Moriya with 15 while the Cuban Beatriz Vilchez tallied 11 points for her team.
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