Four Sweeps on Day 2 of Men’s FIVB Beach World Tour Finals

  0 Braden Keith | September 15th, 2016 | Beach, News, Pro, Pro Beach

2016 FIVB BEACH VOLLEYBALL WORLD TOUR FINALS

Sweeps were the name of the day in the men’s bracket, as  all four of the day’s matches went down 2-0. That included two sweeps by the two Polish teams.

Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel (Poland) Beat Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen (Netherlands) 2-0

  • Poland beats the Netherlands 2-0
  • Pool B

While not as big of an upset as the double defeat of the reigning Olympic women’s champions on Wednesday, Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel upset the Olympic bronze medalists 2-0 in the first match of the day. The Polish pair did not have a good Olympics, finishing tied for 17th.

The victory for Fijalek and Prudel evens the all-time series at 5-5, and Fijalek and Prudel now sit at 1-1 in the pool, leaving the door open for Samoilovs/Smedins to earn a free-pass to the quarter finals with a win over the Dutch on Friday.

“We have a lot of Polish fans here in Toronto,” Fijalek said. “For us the serious tournament starts on Saturday.  It’s a hard season, especially with the Olympics, but we are happy and proud to be here with the best teams in the world.“

Set 1 was all Poland, winning 21-14 on the strength of a very even attack.

Set 2, however, was a wild back-and-forth affair that that went all the way to 26-24 before it was decided. Ultimately, the Dutch unwound themselves in that second set with 9 service errors as part of 13 overall faults in the frame. On the converse, they only committed 1 fault, a net violation, in the first set, but were much less competitive.

Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak (Poland) sweep Nick Lucena/Phil Dalhausser (USA) 2-0

  • Poland beats United States 2-0 (21-10, 21-15)
  • Group C

Thursday was a big day in Polish men’s volleyball. After both teams tied for just 17th at the Olympics, Kantor and Losiak gave the country a second-straight win over big-name opponents with a thumping of the American duo. The match took only 28 minutes to complete.

In the first set, the Poles built a shocking 17-3 lead, though a late surge by the Americans gave them some hope going into set 2.

That momentum carried the Americans at least a small bit in the second stage of the match, where the score was tied as late as 11-11. At 13-12, though, Kantor had a diagonal attack followed by two huge blocks to break the scoring open.

John Hyden/Tri Bourne (USA) beat Chaim Schalk/Ben Saxton (Canada) 2-0

  • United States beats Canada 2-0 (17-21, 17-21)
  • Group D

The other American duo of John Hyden and Tri Bourne fared better than their predecessors on Thursday. A 2-0 win over the Canadians clinched Group D and earned a bye through to the quarterfinals.

The Americans’ combination of experience and youth are paying off through pool play. The veteran Hyden has played the most seasons (16) of any player in this tournament, while Bourne has played the fewest (5).

Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Carambula (Italy) defeat Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen (Mexico) 2-0

  • Italy defeats Mexico 2-0 (26-24, 23-21)
  • Pool A

By far the most competitive of the four men’s sweeps on the day, the pair from Italy beat out the 2015 Pan American Games champions in a long, 50-minute two-set win.

Carambula came up big for Italy i n this match, recording 20 of the team’s 29 combined kills. Ontiveros also had 20 attacking points for Mexico, but costly net violations at the end of both sets wound up doing the Mexicans in.

Ranghieri/Carambula will now play Alison/Schmidt of Brazil, the Olympic champions, for the win in Pool A and the pass to the quarterfinals.

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About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of VolleyMob.com. Braden's first foray into sports journalism came in 2010, when he launched a swimming website called The Swimmers' Circle. Two years later, he joined SwimSwam.com as a co-founder. Long huge fans of volleyball, when Braden and the SwimSwam partners sought an opportunity to …

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