European champion Italy hammered Brazil in straight sets here on Wednesday to remain as the only unbeaten team at the 2007 women's volleyball World Cup.
With the 25-20, 25-23 and 25-19 victory, their ninth in a row, the Italians almost secured a top three finish at the round-robin competition and a berth in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They were also in a very good position to win their first title ever in the quadrennial tournament.
"We have taken another important step to qualify for Beijing, "said Italy head coach Massimo Barbolini. "Our players played a perfect match against one of the strongest teams in the world. We have played a very good match in defense, and they paid good attention to not making mistakes."
It was hotly contested early with both teams playing efficient attacks. However, Brazil suddenly lost the steam towards the end of the first set. After a Paula Pequeno kill pulled the Brazilians within 21-20, Antonella Del Core had a fine spike to make it 22-20 before two consecutive Brazil's errors and a smash of Francesca Piccinini awarded the opener to Italy.
The Brazilians, who had lost only to the United States in their last eight matches, fought back strongly on their way to build a 19-15 cushion in the second set. But the Italians answered with a5-0 run to overtake the lead at 20-19 and held on to make it two sets to nil.
In the third set, Italy jumped to an 8-2 lead and improved to 15-8. Struggling to find their form, the Brazilians managed to cut it to 15-13 by some smart serves of Sheilla Castro, only to see Italy pull away again with a 4-1 burst.
Taismary Aguero scored 19 points to lead the Italians.
A disappointing Brazilian coach Jose Guimaraes brought all her players to the press conference, as a "punishment".
"It is very difficult for me to say anything after such a bad match. I feel ashamed," said Guimaraes. "I have never seen such bad play as today. It is true that Italy played very well, but our performance was so bad. I want to apologize to the people who watched this game."
Later on Wednesday, Serbia beat the United States in four sets, snapping an eight-game winning streak of the Americans.
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 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.
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.
In the last match of the day, Cuba worked really hard to rally past Japan 22-25, 31-29, 25-23 and 25-20, smashing the host's chance of Olympic qualification.
With two more rounds to play in the 12-team round-robin tournament, the United States (8-1), Brazil (7-2), Serbia (7-2) and Cuba (7-2) were still in contention for a top three finish.
Source: Xinhua
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