13/06/2014 23:00
Greece’s men complete perfect day in Larissa
2014 CEV Volleyball European League - Men
Larissa, Greece, June 13, 2014. As the 2014 CEV Volleyball European League stopped on Friday in the city of Larissa, it turned out to be a perfect day for Greece’s Volleyball family. After the women’s national team had historically edged Germany earlier in the afternoon, their countrymen followed up with a 3:1 home victory over Poland (25-22, 25-22, 20-25, 25-22) to improve their win-loss record to 2:1 in Pool A. Last week Greece had scored one victory before having to admit defeat in their second match with Romania in Craiova. Poland – which is debuting this year in the European League with a very young team – still has to record their first victory after losing twice last weekend at home to Montenegro.
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After a very close start, Greece’s superstar and team captain Mitar Tzourits scored three consecutive points to call for the second technical time-out by the score of 16:13. Tzourits continued to lead his side also after the break and Greece claimed the opening set quite easily (25-22). The second set followed a similar plot with the home team breaking away again by the second technical time-out and cashing another 25-22 to make it 2:0. Poland’s head coach Andrzej Kowal decided to make some changes in his starting six for the third set with Mateusz Bienek and Michal Kedzierski replacing Dawid Dryja and Przemyslaw Stepien respectively. Michal Kaczynski and Jakub Wachnik contributed some crucial points and the guests eventually won the third set by 25-20. It looked like Poland was going to stretch the match to a tie-break as they were leading 17:15 also in the fourth set. However, two consecutive blocks by Tzourits restored the balance and with Poland making a series of errors, Greece widened their lead to 22:18 to win the set by 25-22 and the match in four sets.
“Though we lost I think we showed a fairly good performance but we made too many unforced errors,” Poland’s head coach Andrzej Kowal said. “We have a young team and have been working all together for only three weeks. I know we can play much better and we will be doing our best in order to win the second match coming up on Sunday.”
“In tournaments where you play two matches, one after the other, the most difficult thing is to keep your focus also on the second game, and this is especially demanding for the team that wins the first round,” commented Greece’s head coach Sotirios Drikos. “The team that loses the first match comes back much stronger after some video scouting and adjusting the tactics according to the information provided by the coaching staff. So we already know that we have to play better than we did tonight in order to win also the second round. It is definitely too early to start speculating about our qualification for the semi-finals and our mind is solely focused on Sunday’s match.”
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