Sir Safety Perugia 3 – Lube Civitanova 0 (25-22, 25-23, 27-25)
Welcome to the club Perugia. After 4 straight years of making it to the final 4 of the Italian SuperLega playoffs only to be eliminated, Perugia finally wins the coveted “scudetto”. This historic win comes after 7 straight seasons of Modena, Lube Civitanova and Trentino passing the championship trophy around like a bottle of victory champagne. Civitanova gave us an exciting final series, but Perugia was the strongest team in the league from start to finish. You would expect a team winning its first championship like Perugia to overcome some kind of obstacle, a proverbial mountain that they have to climb to finally join the hall of champions. But it was relatively smooth sailing for Lorenzo Bernardi and his team of superstars from all corners of the globe. They finished with the best record in the regular season at 23-3 and won the Italian SuperCup in January. Now they have the SuperLega championship trophy to add to their resume. The final test for Perugia comes next weekend where they will face Zenit Kazan in the Champions League. Beating them would provide a legendary end to this season
Lube did a good job extending the series to the maximum of 5 games but it was clear in this final confrontation who the better team was. Civitanova coach Medei was challenged once again with the difficult decision of whether to go with Sander/Candellaro or Kovar/Stankovic, and the latter pair won out. While Kovar had maybe his best game of the season, scoring 11 kills on 65% hitting, Stankovic had trouble closing blocks against the quick offense of Perugia, failing to score on any blocks during the match. Perugia’s victory was so decisive in large part thanks to their serving, with 8 aces and just 10 errors on 76 attempts, including 2 aces each from Aaron Russell and Aleksander Atanasijevic. Argentinian setter Luciano De Cecco found his middles Marko Podrascanin and Simone Anzani well, as they scored on 7 of their 12 hits. An all-around great performance for one of the most dominant club teams we have seen in volleyball recently.
Match MVP: Aleksander Atanasijevic
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