Australia2

Another long day in Adelaide. The weather was a bit dodgy as they say here. Rainy and windy in the morning but the sun did manage to come out in our last match. On the american side of things Casey and Matt lost a tight one to China 1. They had to be pretty tired having played in country quota and the qualifier. I think it is their best finish ever in FIVB competition. Jake and Rosy have yet to play their semi game but if I were a betting man I would take them over china. On the women's side Jen and April had a subpar tourney. They finished 17th. Tyra and Rachel finished 13th. Also what I would consider a subpar performance for them. I think both teams missed a good opportunity to gain some valuable points towards the Olympics and catch up or keep pace with Nicole and EY. The tourneys are only going to get more difficult as we go forward and teams like Misty and Kerri are in the tourney. EY and Nicole groveled through like Phil and I but like Phil and I they lost in the semis. The matches I saw they looked good.

Phil and I opened up this morning at 8am against the 2nd team from the Netherlands. A team that has been dubbed the american killers. They beat Jake and Rosy 3 times last year and I think they might have beat Lambo and Stein too. Not sure on that one though. We played them in the WC in Swiss and beat them in a tough 3 game battle. We came out strong and won in 2. The first game we frittered away a couple of match points before closing it out. The second we were pretty strong. I think the scores were 19 and 13. In our second match we played the tough German team of Brink and Dieckmann. They can serve really well and take you out of a match quickly. Both guys can bring it from the service line. In the first they were not hitting any serves and we won like 15 or 16. In the second Phil and I were in control and then Brink went back and fired 4 or 5 bullets from the service line. He had at least one ace and maybe 2 and I was struggling to pass the serves very well which created points for them. We caught them at 20 and were able to pull out the match in the end though.

In the semis we started off very slow. They started off serving Phil and were digging and blocking him really well. We came back at the end but they sided out to win 19. The second we were strong and they struggled a bit. Score was 15 or 16. In the third we were up 9-6 and had a point opportunity but could not convert. I gave up some points and they came back and ended up winning 13. Tough loss after grovelling all the way through the losers bracket. Pretty tired now and ready for dinner and some sleep.