The final day and final blog come with a great deal of anticipation for the teams in the finals and a welcome reprieve from the author. I look at myself as a witness to this exciting event and was happy to have been given the opportunity to attend and share some of my observations.

Yesterday's matches were filled with drama and three of the four matches went to four sets and six of those sets were decided by two points. The margin between these teams are thin and matches played one day can easily be reversed the next.

The first match saw a German team that had a chance to beat both China and USA in pool play defeat an Italian team that improved a great deal throughout the event and had a very young team entered into the tournament.

The second match had a Netherlands team that just days earlier had finalist Japan on the ropes before losing in five against a game team from Peru who competed hard in all of its matches. The first three sets were all two point affairs and a swing here or there and Peru would be preparing for the fifth place match.

In the first semifinal featuring China and Japan, the ball handling of China was slightly off and it was all the opening required for a tenacious defensive opponent to seize control. The third set was a two-point affair and it looked like China might force the match beyond three sets. The Japanese libero was exceptional and Ebata Yukiko again led the match with 23 points with more than half of her kills coming from the backrow.

In the evening's final match, Cuba held off a rally and game point swing from the U.S. squad and will advance to the final against Japan. Cuba won the battle at the net and outscored the U.S. team 57-50 in kills and 14-9 in blocks. The U.S. team started slowly and didn't have its first lead until the first technical timeout of the third game. All players dressed were able to get the opportunity to contribute. The U.S. squad battled itself as much as the physical team from Cuba.

The finals and third-place matches will be repeats of the final pool play matches that both went five sets so it should make for interesting theater.

My final thoughts on the event were that the game is always in a state of change and there remains various ways to play the game from both a technical and tactical platform. Some teams rely on precision to combat an apparent physical disadvantage at the net and others fall back on their natural talents to overpower the opponent. The jump spin serve has transitioned to more of a jump floater and the international protocol of a 30 minute warm-up shows that we may be over preparing on game night in the college game. Teams at all levels succeed because of their personnel in addition to their ability to play together.