Laboureur/Sude Sweep Cuban Pair to Clinch Spot in Round of 32

“We only saw their game from yesterday and taped it but only that and the FIVB profile,” Laboureur said. “We watched that video and they played quite similar to yesterday so we could see some things.”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” she continued with regard to whether it was hard to adjust during the match. “Here we could manage it and adapt to the game because they changed their tactics a little bit. We still have space to improve in some things but all in all our base, we’re OK with this.”

Sude and Laboureur picked heavily on Cuba’s Leila Martinez Ortega in service, and while she didn’t have any receiving errors, she also hit at just a 34% rate while taking 38 of her team’s 45 swings.

“We knew where to serve so they had a lot of troubles to receive and so we had it easier in in block defense,” said Germany’s Julia Sude. “We have different targets in every game and we try to fix them or improve them. Of course not every day is like yesterday or the day before but we are always trying to stay stable and this season it has worked well.”

15 of Germany’s 42 points came on Cuban errors, and on offense they hit at a massive 58% rate (13/22 in the 1st set, 12/21 in the 2nd). In the first set, Sude had the lion’s share of the receipt and in the second that was Laboureur’s job, though in both cases the shot chart was well distributed toward the edges of the court.

Cuba’s Lidiannis Benitez did have some success defensively with a match-high 3 blocks. Lidi also landed 4 out of her 7 attacks, though again the Germans were able to greatly limit her impact offensively by serving her partner.

The German pair will play Elsa/Amaranta on Tuesday for seeding purposes; Lildy/Leila’s next match is against Colombia’s Andrea/Gorda on the same day, with the loser being eliminated from the tournament.