Serbia sweeps Korea in Pool L match of FIVB World Grand Prix - Volleyball
One of the last matches in Pool L of the FIVB World Grand Prix saw the Koreans compete with the Serbians in Tokyo, Japan on August 20th. The venue of the competition was the Ariake Colosseum. The match between the Serbians and the Koreans took three sets
to reach its finish with the Serbians celebrating their win in the end.
The first two sets of the match were pretty much one sided with the Serbians in the lead most of the time and the Koreans trailing behind. Even though the Koreans tried to upset the Serbs in the opening set, they were not successful in hindering them from
winning. The performance of the Koreans experienced a downfall in the second set and got the Serbs an easy win. However, the Koreans stepped up their game in the third set but the effort came in too late from Korea and they could not stop the Serbians from
finally winning the match at the following final set scores: 25-18, 25-16 and 25-23.
The Serbian coach, Zoran Terzic, shared his feelings in this way at the press conference after the match was over: “It was a very important game for us. In the first two tournaments we finished second and today we could change that to first place, so we
really tried to do everything to win against Korea. In the first two sets, we did very well and in the third not so good, but enough.”
Whereas the Korean coach, Kim Hyung-Sil, expressed himself in these words: “Congratulations to Serbia that they won a ticket to Macau. Our players practiced very hard and did their best to go to Macau, but the result was disappointing, but I'm proud of my
players.”
The start of the first set was a battle to gain control at the courts in which the Serbs found themselves ahead at 10-8. The Koreans tried to stop the Serbs from extending their advantage by calling time out but the Serbs still had the lead at the second
technical time out at 16-11. The Koreans could not keep up with the pace of their opponents and lost the opening set at 25-18.
The second set took the same tone as the first set with Serbia taking the lead at 6-4 which they maintained until 16-11. The Koreans were left in the lurch as the Serbians sped to another win at 25-16.
The third set of the game saw the match tied at 15-15 and later on at 22-22. However, the Serbs got themselves a win by making the final blow that brought them the set at 25-23.
The player that was able to register the most points in the match was the Serbian Sanja Malagurski, as she tallied 15 points while the Korean top scorer was Kim Yeong-Koung who posted 14 points.
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