Serbia beat the United States in four sets in Nagoya of Japan, on Wednesday to snap an eight-game winning streak of the Americans at the women's volleyball World Cup.
The European runner-up improved to a 7-2 win-loss record with the 28-26, 23-25, 25-20 and 25-23 victory and kept alive its hope of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics.
"The most important reason we won was our motivation was at a very high level tonight," said Serbia head coach Zoran Terzic. "We knew that we must play especially in defense the same as the American team if we wanted to win."
The Serbian team reaped 14 points through blocking, holding American top scorer Tayyiba Haneef-Park to 12 points.
"We had a little problem with our outside hitters, the Serbian team played very good blocking today," said United States head coach Lang Ping.
"I think the last three matches are all very tough, so we have to concentrate on our side of the job, play better and in the difficult moments play very calm and control the tempo. The game can go either way because they are all good teams."
Coming off an upset loss in five sets against Poland on Sunday, the Serbians showed great determination to win from the first set. After the Americans beat off three set points to tie it at 26-all,Jovana Brakocevic smashed a ball home to make it 27-26 before Haneef-Park drove a ball long to hand the opener to Serbia.
The Americans came back strongly in the second set, jumping to a 6-1 lead. After the two sides traded runs to tie it at 23-all, Heather Bown had a kill and teamed up with Ogonna Nnamani for a block against Brakocevic to level one set back for the United States.
The last two sets were dominated by Serbia as Jelena Nikolic proved to be unstoppable. Nikolic converted 23 of her 43 spiking opportunities to finish with 23 points.
Source: Xinhua
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