Omsk, Russia, February 6, 2014. The support of almost 5000 spectators on the stands of the Athletic Concert Complex V. Blinov could not help the local heroines of Omichka OMSK REGION to emerge victorious in their 2014 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League - Women game against Eczacibasi VitrA ISTANBUL. The visiting Turkish side claimed a 3:1 (25-17, 29-27, 22-25, 25-21) win over the Russian team in the first leg of their Playoff 6 clash.
Eczacibasi’s great attacking and especially blocking efforts helped the team dominate in the first set. The visiting team took advantage of its effective serving and the opponent’s errors to clinch a very tight second set. The Cats from Omsk successful spiking performance continued into the third set to please the crowd with a 25-22 win. However, in the fourth set it was once again the Turkish squad’s serving that tipped the final outcome in Eczacibasi’s favor.
Nancy Carrillo became the best scorer of the match by stringing as many as 29 points for Omichka. Neslihan Demir was the winning team’s most prolific player with 26 points. Each of them added 7 aces on her tally.
”Today our team played very well in defense. It was very important not to miss many balls and we managed,” Lorenzo Micelli, head coach of Eczacibasi stated after the game. ”The first set was the decisive one. Our main task was to make it difficult for the rival to play well in reception. I will be a lot tougher with my team when preparing for the home game.”
”Eczacibasi deserved to win today,” his Omichka counterpart Zoran Terzic added. ”Even in the difficult moments they play at a very high level. We are still aiming for that. There were many easy situations in the game today that we did not take advantage of. When the opponent’s reception was not good we did not counter attack well. We will watch the video of the game. If we succeed in performing better in such favorable moments, we have a good chance to show a good game in Istanbul.”
”We were quite nervous before the match and also during the first set,” Omichka captain Elena Yureva said. ”But we overcame the stress, and towards the third set, we managed to take the initiative. I really do not know what went wrong… We played at home, for our fans. I guess the nervousness took over. Our rivals were stronger in defense. Against a team like Eczacibasi you are not allowed to make mistakes. We need to improve our attacks and our reception so that we make it easier for our setter.”
”The Russian team is very strong and has very tall players,” Esra Gümüs, captain of Eczacibasi, admitted. ”But we have prepared very well for the game, we arrived earlier so that we can adapt to the cold and get over the jetlag. In the first two sets we performed very well. After that Omichka picked up its game and started to block successfully, but we were good at defense. We served well, so we turned out to look stronger in that match.”
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