2011 Grand Prix Week 2

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2011 World Grand Prix Week 2: August 12th – 14th, 2011.

August 14th Live Links: Please click the match to watch. The times next to the matches listed below are in USA Pacific Time. If you need to compare your time to Pacific time you can use the world clock provided below.

Japan 3-1 Dominican Republic

USA 1-3 Serbia

Germany 3-0 Peru

China 0-3 Russia

Brazil 3-1 Italy

Korea 3-0 Argentina

Thailand 3-0 Kazakhstan

Poland 3-1 Cuba

Results + Stats: Please click to enlarge.

FIVB Pictures:

Power Quotes:

August 12th:

Coach Hugh McCutcheon: Logan Tom didn’t play last weekend. We want to develop some younger outside hitters and thankfully they played well. Megan Hodge came in today and had a big impact. Logan is a big part of our team. She got off the plane on Wednesday and I’m sure she was jetlagged, but she did lots of little things today to make our team successful. And she also works hard to make those around her better players; that’s very valuable for us.

German coach Giovanni Guidetti: “Russia did very well in blocking and attacks, so it was difficult for Germany to defend. And Germany’s attacks were poor today.”

Serbia coach Zoran Terzic (on switching 2 setters): We have two good setters in (Ana) Antonijevic and (Maja) Ognjenovic and in the Grand Prix I try to give both of them a chance. Today, I started with Antonijevic, but maybe during the game it was better with Ognjenovic. From time to time one player plays better. Today, it was like this. We have two very good setters and while the Grand Prix is a very important tournament for us, it is also very good preparation for the European Championship, so we must play with all our players.

August 13th:

Argentina head coach Horacio Bastit: “We are really happy with this victory. We knew it was going to be very very hard. I agree with coach Rodriguez, we like playing five sets as well, we scored our first World Grand Prix points after a tiebreak. We are aware than if we want to win with a team that spikes and block better than us, we have to play as long as possible and win thanks to our stamina. I am really satisfied that my team can play equally against big, experienced teams. We don’t feel like favorites at all. We know that to win we have to play very hard. We don’t know what to expect tomorrow, since we rarely play against teams from outside of the Americas. I will take it as a great experience and I want to see what my team can do about the Asian volleyball.”

Korea captain Sook-Ja Lee: “This was our fifth game in the Grand Prix and it was the most difficult one, because we played: one – against Poland, and two – against Polish spectators, who showed how much they love volleyball. Because of that, we were nervous and made more mistakes than usually, especially in service.”

Thailand coach Radchatagriengkai Kiattipong:” I congratulate Italy. We did our best performance. Thai players learned from Italy how to play”.

Yu Juemin thought that the German team played well, and was happy that the girls didn’t give up after losing the first two sets. Their targeted defense and block worked this time. Speaking about tomorrow’s play with Russia, he said that the Russians had the height and forceful spikes. If the team could do well in serve and reception and in blocking Gamova, they may win the match.

USA captain Jennifer Tamas: I think the USA had a really good match tonight. Japan play a very different style of volleyball from us so it is important for us to focus on USA volleyball and we took care of some details on our offense and put a great match together. We were good at the service line. Logan (Tom) had some great serves at the end and really showed her leadership. So it was a good win for us.

August 14th:

Poland captain Milena Radecka: “We are very happy that we won. We were very concentrated and determined. It was very important for us, because now we have a chance to qualify to the Final Round. We served very well today and we gave the other team a lot of troubles. We didn’t make so many small and stupid mistakes, but we still have to work on them during the training sessions.”

Argentina captain Horacio Bastit: “I want to congratulate my collegue from Korea on what they showed this weekend. For us it was a really good experience to play against Korea, who play a lot different than what we know and do. I feel like we could do more today, we had many good runs, but we were overcome by a really good rival. It was very nice to see such a great player as Yeon-Kuong Kim, it was very pleasurable to watch her.”

Thailand captain Wilavan Apinyapong:” Today we are very happy to win. It was hard to win because we used a lot of our power. I hope we will play better next week”.

Italy captain Antonella Del Core:” We played well but it was difficult for us because there were a lot of Brazilian fans”.

Giovanni believed that Germany did what it was expected to do. Some young players who didn’t have much time court got the opportunity to play today. There was room for Germany to improve. It could have played much better.

Yu Juemin said that though the team lost the game 0-3, the girls used the skills and tactics well. Russia was a very strong team, especially on the net. The Chinese team made some mistakes in the match, which they should work on to avoid from happening in the future. After two-week competition, he had the rough lineup list for the Asian Championships. Some weaknesses of the team were shown from the WGP tournament. They would try to improve and focus on the Asian Championships.

Japan captain Erika Araki: We won but we made mistakes and our block didn’t work well, so next week we want better blocking.

Serbia coach Zoran Terzic: Today we played one the best games in recent times. I’m starting to believe it’s our destiny to play our best games against the USA. Really, it was a bit of a surprise for me because from the start we tried to make everything, especially serve and attack, with 100 per cent power. Usually, if a team tries to play like that they make a lot of mistakes. But we didn’t do that today and that’s why we were able to win. I’m very satisfied with how we’ve played in the two rounds so far. Today, maybe we were perfect. I hope we can do the same in Tokyo.

Match Videos and Highlights:

Russia vs Germany: