US defeats Turkey 3-1 in a FIVB World Grand Prix match – Volleyball news
The second match of the third day of the final round of the FIVB World Grand Prix was held between the defending champions USA and Turkey. The competition took place on Friday, June 29, 2012 in Ningbo, China while the venue of the match was the Ningbo Beilun Gymnasium which seated a total of 2,970 spectators. The US took an hour and 50 minutes to hand out a defeat to the Turkish squad by 3-1.
USA sealed the deal on its opponent at the following final set scores: 25-18, 25-23, 21-25 and 25-20.
The coach of the US side, Hugh McCutcheon, expressed his jubilation on winning the match by making the following comments, “I am very happy about our performance today. Turkey played strong match, it is tactically a good battle. I am most happy of the depth we had in our team, the substitution we have came in and had an positive effect.”
On the other hand, the Turkish coach Marco Aurelio Motta shared his views at the outcome of match by giving the following statements, “We can play only one set today. The USA is concentrated on court and we can play our game on this one set. I hope tomorrow when we play against China, we will play our best.”
The top scorer of the match was Megan Hodge from US as she kept the pressure on her opponents by tallying 28 points while Neriman Ozsoy of Turkey kept the challenge up from her side by putting up a team high score of 20.
US stormed to an early lead in the first set at 5-0 that made the Turkish coach call for a time out. However, it did not help Turkey much as the US was able to extend their advantage till 16-10. The Turkish squad kept trailing behind as the US got to 24-18 and pushed ahead for an opening set win at 25-18.
The first set win led the US to take the advantage at the coming of the first technical time out at 8-5 and was still going strong at 18-12. Turkey was still trailing behind at 23-17 but managed to close in the gap at 23-21 but the US was not about to give up their dominance and they raced ahead to bag the second set at 25-23.
The third set started off with both the teams fairly level with each other but towards the end of the set, Turkey was leading at 23-19. Once they had the advantage, Turkey did not look back and managed to avoid a clean sweep by securing the third set at 25-21.
The fourth set of the match got competitive and Turkey pulled ahead with a lead of 11-7 which they could not hold onto for long as US tied the score at 11-11. Another tie was reached at 16-16 but it was the US that finally sealed the deal at 25-20.
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