USA Head Coach Doug Beal was pleased with the team's fighting spirit. We created a lot of opportunities to score points on our serve but were unable to convert many of them. George Roumain posted 23 kills, two blocks and two aces to remain as the tournament's top scorer with 106 total points. Mike Lambert ranks as the tournament's top spiker with 67 kills and a .495 hitting percentage. Setter Lloy Ball leads the event is assists with 14.33 per game.
Ball feels the team is in good shape to qualify for the Olympics if they continue to play hard.
He pointed to the Russians serving as the key to the match. They served us very tough and that created some problems for us in the beginning of the match, but we handled their serves better as the match went on and started to serve tougher ourselves, putting them in difficult situations. See our News Archive section for prior releases.