EuroVolley 2017 W: Unusual strategy of Georgia’s and Czech’s coach was in vain, Italy and Serbia notch easy wins

Serbia-vs-Czech-EuroVolley2017

The Italian National Team did not give a glimmer of hope to EuroVolley debutants and also one of the hosts Georgia in Round 1 of Pool B, in Tbilisi, 3-0 (25-14, 25-12, 25-12).

It rarely happens at some major volleyball tournament that one team does not make a single ace in the game but that’s exactly what happened to Georgia, today. Italy made 9 aces of which 6 were a handiwork of Raphaela Folie. There’s another interesting fact about this match. Georgia’s head coach Paata Ulumbelashvili used 12 of 13 players registered for the tournament! Only Maria Tsarenko did not play against Italy.

Paola Egonu scored 16 points for the “Azzurre”, while Ann Kalandadze notched 5 for Georgia.

In Pool D in Ganja, Azerbaijan, Serbia got themselves a straight-set triumph over the Czech Republic, having to sweat only in the third period when they managed to make a comeback after being 5 points down (16-11). The Czech’s head coach Zdeněk Pommer tried to compensate the lack of quality of his national team compared to Serbia’s by doing the same thing as the coach of Georgia – introducing nearly all players into play. To be precise, a 13 out of 14! Petra Kojdová was the only registered player for the match who did not spend a second in the field.

Tijana Bošković led Serbia’s powerful attack (54%) with 22 points. Aneta Kocmanová Havlíčková scored 14 points for the Czech side.