Japan defeats Korea 3-2 in FIVB Men’s World Olympic Qualifying Tournament match
Japan and Korea competed with each other in a FIVB Men’s World Olympic Qualifying Tournament match on June 5, Tuesday for five tough sets at the end of which the victory was achieved by the Japanese.
The match was being hosted in the capital of the home team and the venue of the competition was the Tokyo Metropolitan Gym.
After the closely contested first two sets, the match remained even but the Japanese managed to assert themselves by bagging the third frame. The Koreans responded in the fourth one but ended up being smothered by their counter parts in the fifth set of
the game. The scoreboard showed the following final set scores: 25-22, 24-26, 25-20, 19-25 and 15-6.
The coach of the home team, Tatsuya Ueta, shared his feelings at the press conference in the following words, “Our defence functioned very well. Kunihiro Shimizu had 13 points and played well. Korea's serves created problems for us. They moved us around
the court. Each of our players did their job tonight. Our technical performance in the last set was good.”
On the other hand, the Korean coach Park Ki Won made the following comments, “The individual level of the players was unstable. They could not perform well. This was the key element. I'm sorry we lost.”
Tatsuya Fukuzawa of Japan was able to score the most points by tallying a figure of 20. Fukuzawa was helped by his team mate Kunihiro Shimizu as he added 13 points of his own. On the Korean side, the most active player was Park Chul-Woo who kept the pressure
on his opponents by scoring 19 points.
The opening set started off with a Japanese lead at 5-3 but the match got to a tie at 13-13. Japan got the lead back again and stretched it till 22-20 that eventually translated into a win at 25-22. The second set also saw the Japanese take the lead at 5-3
but Korea managed to take control at 15-14. The match got to a tie at 24-24 and the Koreans secured the frame at 26-24. The third set went to the Japanese while the fourth one to the Koreans but the fifth one came easy for the Japanese as the Koreans seemed
to lose heart as well as the frame at 15-6.
Tags: