National team of Croatia
In the first set Croatia and Belarus started nervously, especially in passing the balls, and Croatia led 8-6 at the first technical timeout. The really successful blocks of the Byelorussians made it hard for the Croatians to put a distance between themselves and Belarus. After the second technical timeout the Croatian team led 16-15 and because of two mistakes of the Byelorussians the Croatians could expand the distance to Belarus for four points.
Belarus did hardly catch up and the Croatian Mia Jerkov mishit the service, but her team mate Samanta Fabris who replaced Sanja Popović in the middle of the set finished the set at 25-19 for Croatia with a hard attack.
The Byelorussians were obviously confused in the beginning of the second set and didn’t find a useful method against the Croatian attacks full of pressure whose receiver Mira Topic was especially in a good mood during this phase of the match. At the first technical timeout Belarus was clearly behind Croatia at 2-8. Afterwards the Croatians achieved nine points in a row and they were ten points ahead of Belarus at the second technical timeout.
In the final phase of the match particularly the opposite Samanta Fabris filled the audience with enthusiasm because of the most attack points and her extremely hard services. Symptomatically for the course of the set the Byelorussians finished the set with a mistake in passing the ball and only ten points after 21 minutes (10-25).
Croatia seemed suddenly quite unsure and gave Belarus consequently the chance get back into the match again. The Croatian coach Igor Lovrinov appeared really unhappy tried to set new impulses with the replacement of the setter (Bernarda Brčić came for Ana Grbac). The Croatian team could get away from Belarus with five points ahead (21-16) and allowed only three more points for Byelorussians in the final phase of the match. With a block success the Croatians finished the set at 25-19 and won the match 3:0.
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