Ekaterinburg, Russia, April 8, 2015.  In the first final match, the Russian ladies of Uralochka-NTMK EKATERINBURG took the first confident step towards the 2015 CEV Volleyball Challenge Cup title with the straight-set 3:0 (25-18, 26-24, 25-13) win over their visitors from Turkey, BURSA BBSK.  The still very important return match in Bursa will take place on April 12.

Right from the start the home ladies set the pace of the match – 8-4, 16-10, 21-17, and showed the intention to hold on to this lead throughout the first set.  Uralochka’s traditionally highly effective first-tempo attack line of Sinead Jack and Irina Zaryazhko set the high standard in offence and showed great performance throughout the whole match scoring a total of 12 and 16 points respectively.  The second set was promising to go by the same plot – 8-6, 16-10, but the visitors were not giving up and were determined to put up some fight, closing the gap and evening out the score at 23:23 before letting the home ladies get away only at 27-25.  In the third set, the initiative was again taken by Uralochka straight from the start – 8-5, 16-10, 21-12, showing high quality performance in blocking and serving on the way to a landslide 25-13 and 3:0 final result.  BURSA’s Priscilla Rivera Brens contributed 17 points to her team’s tally to become the top scorer of the match.

Emin Imen, head coach of BURSA BBSK:  “The CEV Challenge Cup is a very important tournament for us.  This is the first time we participate in a competition of such a level.  Today we saw that our opponent Uralochka is the most difficult team for us to play against.  The last match will be tough. We will play at home and we should use it to our advantage.”

Nikolay Karpol, head coach of Uralochka-NTMK EKATERINBURG:  “Tonight our team was able to organize the offence quite effectively, using a lot of first-tempo attacks, adding up some confident blocking actions.  The defence was not satisfactory, but overall we made fewer mistakes than our opponents.  I cannot make any predictions for the next match in Bursa – the strongest will be determined on the court during the game.”

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