Best Players – Sequeira serves up six aces in win over Finland

Sequeira was his team’s top scorer with 19 points but six of those came from the service line.

Sequeira’s serving performance was matched by France’s Thibault Rossard in their five-set match against Italy. Rossard also totalled 19 points, adding two blocks and 11 kills to his six aces. Stephen Boyer equalled Rossard’s points total but the pair couldn’t do enough to stop Italy winning 3-2. 

 

The day’s top scoring performance came in the match between Australia and Japan. Paul Carroll didn’t trouble himself with too many blocks and serves (he scored in neither category), but was full-on attacking the net, picking up 27 spiking points. Luke Smith supported him with 22 points, while Japan were led by Haku Ri and Issei Otake with 16 apiece.

Also in Group 2, China’s Chuan Jiang managed to get four of his team’s 15 blocking points against Turkey and he added three aces for good measure. Turkey could only manage five blocks in total against China. 

In the same Group, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands kept their opponents under pressure, limiting their top scorers to just six points. 

The Czechs were led by Jan Galabov with 18 points, while his teammate Ales Holubec contributed five blocking points in his total of seven. Peter Mlynarcik and Marcel Lux of Slovakia were restricted to six points each by the Czechs.

The Dutch had a similarly easy time against Korea with Wouter Ter Maat topping the scorers with 16 points. Teammate Thomas Koelewijn contributed four blocks among his eight points, while Korea’s top guns were Joo-Hyeong Park and Kang-Won Lee, both with six points. The Netherlands scored 14 blocking points to Korea’s one and had nine aces; Korea had none.