Arnhem, Netherlands, April 7, 2017. After the pool phase of the #EuroVolleyU18W came to an end on Thursday, it is time to look back at a thrilling group stage of the competition being held in Arnhem and at the players who have made a name for themselves so far, ahead of the knockout round starting on Saturday.
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The semis 1-4 will be held on Saturday with Italy versus Serbia (15:45 CEST) and a Belarusian team that will play against Russia later in the evening at 18:15 CEST, while the semis 5-8 will see Germany facing Poland (15:30 CEST) and hosts Netherlands taking on Slovenia at 18:00 CEST. All matches will be streamed live and for free on LAOLA1.TV as well as on Facebook @CEVEuroVolley.
Romania had to leave the tournament after a shocking defeat against Slovenia on Thursday, but outside spiker Adelina Budai-Ungureanu was clearly the tournament’s top scorer in the preliminary round, reaching an unbelievable 96 points, nine more than her closest rival, Italian MVP contender and opposite Terry Ruth Enweonwu (87). The Italian butterfly is also among the best servers at the European Championship and has scored, as did also Gabriela Makarowska from Poland and Alja Jerala from Slovenia, 16 aces so far.
Overall, Romania have been the biggest point scorers with 333 across their five pool matches as they played the most sets of all teams with 21, while the winless Greek team played only 16 at the #EuroVolleyU18W. There has been a large number of blocks in the tournament, with Russia boasting the most effective ratio, delivering 52 crushing blocks, which means that they scored 3.3 blocks per set. Only Romania had better numbers and scored even six blocks more than Russia. With 20 killing blocks to her name, Russian middle blocker Viktoriia Pushina is statistically the queen at the net. Additionally, she is the only player in the tournament with an average of more than one block per set.
The best receiver so far has been Serbia’s Jovana Mirosavljevic. The outside spiker received 113 balls and dealt perfectly with 27.43% of them. Among the players who have played in all five matches, Rachele Morello (16 sets) from Italy is the tournament’s top setter so far with an efficiency of 40%.