The boys played with poise this evening!

We took down a talented team in Bulgaria, 3-0, with a balanced attack and disciplined defense.

Micah Christenson did a nice job getting our hitters one-on-one opportunities. We were great exacting our will in the middle of the court with the BIQ and quick.

Our middles, Dylan Davis and Eric Mochalski did a great job attacking the quick and opening up the BIQ for the Taylors – Sander and Crabb. Sander led the team with 15 points followed by Maurice Torres' 13 points.  

Our pin hitters did a nice job especially when we were out of system making high smart swings. We blocked most of our balls tonight in transition, so that says a lot about the teamwork these guys are developing.

This team can go far if we can continue to attack and control the middle, play defense behind our disciplined block and keep our unforced errors to a minimum! Not a small task but very attainable with this deep and talented team. Speaking of deep and talented, Josh Taylor and Brian Cook gave us an upgrade when we needed it tonight.

It is going to take both depth and breadth to get the same result against our next two foes. We play a very dangerous host team tomorrow night in the feature match. Brazil lost a shocker this evening to Japan. What a great volleyball match. Both teams played with the style and brand of their country's storied volleyball pasts. Japan's desire on defense finally created enough point scoring opportunities to give Japan the 17-15 win. If we can match Japan and Brazil's heart, we will have a shot at winning our pool.  Brazil will be very focused mañana!

We get a later start tomorrow since we don't play until 18:30. We are wearing white!  Check us out on www.FIVB.org. The boys looked sharp in red tonight!

Most of the staff spent 13 hours in the gym scouting today so "boa noite!"

Patch