12/07/2014 22:00
Slovenia wins first semi-final round with Greece
2014 CEV Volleyball European League - Men
Thessaloniki, Greece, July 12, 2014. On Saturday night Slovenia made a first step on their way to the finals of the 2014 CEV Volleyball European League – Men. The team mentored by head coach Luka Slabe edged Greece at the tie-break (19-25, 28-26, 25-22, 23-25, 15-11) at Evosmos sports centre in Thessaloniki to get a small edge before the return game coming up on Wednesday, July 16, in Maribor.
Click here for more info including detailed stats of the match
Greece got an early lead just before the first technical time-out of the first set (8:5) and increased it up to 11:7 but some powerful serves by Mitja Gasparini helped Slovenia make it 11-10. The guests managed to stay in touch until the second technical time-out, where the score stood at 16:14 for Greece, but two consecutive blocks by Dmytro Filippov made it 18-14 and the hosts comfortably won the first set by 25-19.
The second set was more like a carrousel with continuous ups and downs. Klemen Cebulj’s float serve created a lot of problems to the Greek receivers and on a 6:0 run Slovenia made it 9:3 before widening their advantage to 15:8. Two aces in a row by Ioannis Takouridis helped Greece reduce the gap (12:15) and the home heroes finally tied the score at 24 all with an unforced error by Gasparini. However, Greece never managed to take the lead back and a mistake by Mitar Tzourits finished the set at 28-26 for Slovenia.
The home side started poorly also in the third set where the game followed a similar plot. Slovenia got an early lead by 2-3 points, Greece tried their best to come back and level the score but they never had a real chance, so Slovenia eventually won this set by 25-22.
In the early stages of the fourth set Greece moved the score to 7:3 and then made it 13:8 but the guests fought their way back to make it 16 all. Another close fight followed before Tzourits scored the last point of the set for Greece to call for the tie-break.
In the tie break Greece went up 8:6 but after that the course of the game changed completely: Slovenia scored six consecutive points and exploited Greece’s errors to never look back and win the first round of the semi-finals. 32 points by Mitar Tzourits were not enough for the home heroes to cash the much desired victory as the opponents relied on a more even distribution of their points, with their charts topped by Mitja Gasparini with 21.
Sotirios Drikos, head coach of Greece, commented: “As we expected it was a hard match until the last rally. We lost mainly because of the many mistakes we made after we changed sides of the court in the tie-break. We missed five serves and conceded two easy aces to Slovenia. It is difficult to get matches of this quality by this time of the season but the result shows that we played until the very end. Everything is still open. We are fighters and we want to go to Slovenia and play even better than we did tonight. I hope we will get good referees like those who were here tonight and I promise we will do our best there in Maribor.”
Luka Slabe, head coach of Slovenia: “It was a real fight from the first point till the last. We made too many errors in attack, much more than our average per set and that hurt us all night long. If you compare our performance with our previous matches, we probably did not serve that good tonight but still it was enough to win. So we have to change those two things for the second match: we need to make a way fewer errors in attack and to be more aggressive from the service line. Congratulations to the Greek team on their performance. I’m expecting a similar match in Maribor. I hope we will win but it is the semifinals. Though we are always confident and aware of our strength, we do respect our opponents.”
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