Moroccan Mehdi Walid plays 1st tempo against Egypt
Brahim Bouchdouk’s squad earned their first victory of the tournament with a 3-2 (18-25, 16-25, 25-23, 32-30, 15-11) result hammered out after almost two hours of play time, but the two sets that the Egyptians won were sufficient for them to stay in the fourth position in the pool’s ranking.
In the first two sets Egypt showed a far better performance than their opponents. With more productive efforts on all fronts coach Gaber Abouzeid’s players cruised to 25-18 and 25-16 wins and seemed all set to go for the straight sets.
However, now that they had already secured their place in the Round of 16, perhaps they lost some of the concentration during set No. 3. Morocco’s captain and best scorer Zouhair El Graoui and his team-mates took this chance to turn things around in the conclusive moments of the set to win it by 25-23.
Egypt could not take advantage of the two consecutive match points at 24-22 in the fourth set and Morocco outwitted their opponents deep into overtime by the final 32-30.
In the tie-breaker, the Moroccans seemed more motivated to look for their first victory in Ankara and at 15-11 burst into celebration.
Zouhair El Graoui piled up a fantastic 31 points to contribute to his team’s victory as the best scorer of the match. Mostafa Abdelrahman and Islam Abdelkader were Egypt’s best scorers with 19 and 18 points, respectively.
See the WoV Community profiles of Junior teams of Morocco and Egypt.
For more info about this competition, click on Junior World Championship 2013 M.
