2022 FIVB World Championships

Nice to see the USA come back from one of the worst losses (Poland) I've seen in a while (not counting the Serbia match which Karch didn't try very hard to win). The USA won in 4, 25-22,21-25, 25-20, 25-22. USA started out slow in the first set but recovered and outscored TURK 15-7 in the last 22 pts. TURK came roaring back in the second and won it relatively easily. The 3rd set was a turning point as the USA's serve started falling in and the USA's block also began zeroing in on the Turkish attackers. The match was hard fought in spite of there being no deuce games. Both teams played very hard.

USA was led by Cook hitting 13-3-25 and hitting.400; Drews hit 10-1-31 and hitting .290; Franti had a bad match with 10-8-29 and hitting .069. Both Ogbogu and Washington did well with 7 & 4 kills respectively and hitting .500 and .333 respectively. Not as many middle attacks as the USA's serve receive wasn't the greatest. USA out blocked a strong blocking TURK team 15-10. USA also had 9 aces to TURK's 5; plus a number of USA serves put TURK out-of-system. Serve reception for USA was definitely iffy. It appeared to me that Franti was the poorest receiver for the USA. Karch did the double sub in, I think, every set. It was mostly successful. Cuttino & Carlini came in for Poulter and Drews. Cutting had 5-1-12 hitting .333.

USA held Karakurt, one of TURK's best hitters, to 14-11-39 and hitting .077. Baladin hit 10-5-23 hitting .217. Gunes, a TURK MB, was TURK's best hitter with 15-2-21 and hitting .619.

USA showed a lot of fight, which was needed, as the USA would go out to a lead and TURK would come right back. USA came back from some deficits also. Karch also put Hentz in for JWO every so often. Not sure what the deal was with that; maybe just to keep giving Hentz some game experience. A very entertaining match, especially as the USA won.

The USA match vs Thailand was a combination of the worst match I've seen and the best. The first 2 sets were all Thailand. USA starters just didn't have it. Karch started substituting in the 2nd set; Carlini in for Poulter, Bajema in for Robinson-Cook. In the 3rd set, (I think), Karch lost his cool and yelled at the team. He was not happy with their effort. One of the announcers said that she had never seen Karch yell at the team before. Over the period of the next set or two, Cuttino went in Drews, and Wilhite-Parsons went in for Franti. From the 1/3 of the 3rd set, the USA team started getting their act together. The rest of the match was very entertaining. The USA won, 23-25, 21-25, 25-19, 27-25 and 15-13. USA faced two match points in the 4th set but successfully pulled out the win.

The Thailand team is very short, maybe 1 player over 6'0". But they play hard. Sort of like playing a backboard; the ball always comes back. The USA out hit Thailand 73-59, out blocked them 13-8, same number of aces-2 for both teams and the USA out erred them 38-23. Yep 38-23. Pretty sad total. Granted a lot of the errors were in the 1st & 2nd sets, but still.

The middles for the USA were the 1st and 3rd point scorers for the USA which is unusual. Bajema was one of the best servers for the USA, having 2 aces, but also going on 2 or 3 serving runs. Carlini also had a couple of serving runs. All in all, an exciting and very entertaining match.