Slovakia Beats Australia 3-1 to Jump to Top of Group 2 Play

  0 Braden Keith | June 03rd, 2017 | Asian Volleyball, Australian volleyball, European volleyball, FIVB World League, International Volleyball

2017 FIVB WORLD LEAGUE

Group 2 Standings After 2 Days of Play:

Matches Pts Sets Points
Rank Team W L W L Ratio W L Ratio
1  Slovakia 2 0 6 6 1 6.000 178 162 1.099
2  Slovenia 2 0 6 6 2 3.000 195 170 1.147
3  Turkey 2 0 5 6 2 3.000 185 160 1.156
4  China 1 1 4 5 4 1.250 207 207 1.000
5  Czech Republic 1 1 4 5 4 1.250 190 198 0.960
6  Netherlands 1 1 3 4 3 1.333 174 167 1.042
7  Portugal 1 1 3 5 5 1.000 212 217 0.977
8  Australia 1 1 2 4 5 0.800 210 207 1.014
9  South Korea 1 1 2 4 5 0.800 197 197 1.000
10  Japan 0 2 1 2 6 0.333 169 183 0.923
11  Finland 0 2 0 2 6 0.333 171 188 0.910
12  Egypt 0 2 0 0 6 0.000 120 152 0.789

Note: teams in group 2 are split into 3 sites of 4 teams each on each of the 3 weekends of the intercontinental stage of the World League. All teams are scored in a single table, regardless of the sub-pool in which they’re playing.

Pool B2 of the 2nd tier of FIVB’s World League saw the host team Slovakia take a 3-1 win over Australia to move to the top of the group table. Portugal, meanwhile, recovered from an opening round loss to those same Australians to beat Japan 3-2 – giving them 3 points the hard way in two matches

Slovakia def. Australia 3-1 (25-22, 21-25, 30-28, 25-22)

This was a hard-fought 3-1 win against Australia in a messy match that saw 32 combined blocks and 61 combined points on errors in just 4 sets of play. Australia actually led in most of the major categories, with a big exception being at the service line – where Slovakia had 7 to just 2 for the visitors.

Peter Ondrovic led Slovakia with a balanced 15 points – 9 on kills, 3 on blocks, and 3 on aces. He was efficient offensively, scoring his 9 kills on just 13 shots.

Samuel Walker had 6 blocks for Australia, part of a 9-point overall performance.

Portugal def. Japan 3-2 (25-21, 19-25, 21-25, 26-24, 19-5)

A back-and-forth affair, that saw 104 total points for Japan and 106 for Portugal, wound up the way of the Europeans in 5 sets. The team was led by monster performances from brothers Marco and Alexandre Ferreira. Marco Ferriera put up 21 points, while Alexandre Ferreira had 18. The two combined for 32 of the team’s 64 kills and 6 of the team’s 14 kills.

The margin for Portugal on the block wound up to be insurmountable for Japan – Portugal had 14 blocks to just 1 for Japan. Asian teams tend to play a style that relies more on back-row defense than their blocking game at the net. Japan had 29 digs while Portugal had 16, but back row defense doesn’t have the same success right at the international level as a powerful block does. That was demonstrated by Japan’s 0-2 record and having been out-blocked 28-8.

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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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