John Speraw
“I was interested to see how we would start the match tonight. We did talk about that in the locker room as being an important aspect of this match. It feels like we didn’t play much volleyball this summer. We rested Matt Anderson and Max Holt during the World League and Aaron Russell was pretty significantly injured at the end of the season. So we didn’t have three key players for much of the summer and Taylor Sander was hurt so we have not had enough time to train to make me feel comfortable. I felt better after this match not because we won, but because of the way we played the game. What we did in the previous four years was to invest in young players and even though we haven’t had enough time to make me feel comfortable, what I saw tonight was a team comfortable playing with each other and competing the way I wanted them to compete and that was because we have some returning players that have some experience but are still young in the game,” says John Speraw.
“Before the game I said tonight was about showing what we have been working on this summer. As John Speraw said, their service took all the momentum away from us and we couldn’t find a way back. They didn’t allow us to focus and I think they have the best defense in the world. We just couldn’t do what we wanted. I was frustrated and disappointed and I’m sure the spectators felt the same way. You can’t get much out of a match like this, but still the most important thing is to be able to learn from it. This tournament has strong teams in it and so we have to show our spirit as challengers, and I hope we start doing that tomorrow. We prepared to receive strong serves. Their service was good but we were deficient in other aspects. Still, I feel we could have done more in response to their serving,” says coach of Japan for the FIVB website.
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