2017 FIVB World Grand Prix Women's Volleyball

The new Olympic Channel (formerly Universal) is covering all the FIVB matches since the channel started up a couple of weeks ago. If you have Verizon, it's on 91 or 591 (HD).
Don't know about other cable services, but the major ones are probably providing this new channel.

FLO VB says 1 change made. Removed McMahon; replaced w/ Bartsch. Wonder if McMahon got exhausted after her fab work at the Pan Am Games.

The Serbia match was so interesting. Among other things, our intrepid commentators did not hold anything back, including criticism of coaching strategies and players on both teams. I wondered why Micha did not get any service attempts (unless she got one during a commercial?), and was impressed that both Courtney and Drews got so much playing time. Sunderland seemed to be putting Courtney in as a serious contender to stick with the team going forward.

I think the "color" guy is (Mark?) Ryan. Ryan and Sunderland come across as an inseparable pair and generally do a pretty good job. When they are on broadcast TV they explain the rules. In this situation, they did not do very much of that. It was extremely interesting to hear what I would call constructive criticism from announcers who were prepared and knew the talent from all of the teams quite well. That gave them more credibility.

I was therefore a bit concerned about the US ladies lacking a "hammer" both "in the gym" or coming out of college. Frankly, I thought Bartch-Hackley hit the ball very hard, but got blocked a lot. Our other hitters, including Meghan Courtney, did seem to be more finesse type players, who could not be counted on to kill the ball out of system. It looked like the 4 semi finals teams in the Gran Prix had one or even two hitters who could not be consistently stopped.

I believe the A grade was based upon the fact that we did not send all of our top players to this tourney. There were 5 or 6 former Olympians who were given the Summer off to rest. I was less certain whether the other countries were doing the same thing. But regardless Serbia, Italy and China all have impressive young players. So we have a lot of work to do before the next Olympics.