Cuba defeats Chile and advances to the finals

GUANAJUATO, Mexico, September 9 2016 - Cuba defeated Chile in three sets by scores of 25-21, 25-14 and 25-22 to grant the ticket to the Men’s U23 Pan Am Cup finals.

Miguel Lopez topped with 19 points, including seven aces. Osniel Rendon closed with 17 and three ases, while Osniel Melgarejo scored 13. For Chile, Cristopher Baeza scored 9 points. Cuba that had already qualified to the FIVB Men’s U23 World Championship will match Argentina for the gold medal.

“We reached a very important goal, one was to qualify to the World Championship and the other one was to advance to the finals and play for the cup. We will give everything against Argentina. We started a little bit down but we recovered the calm to come out and win,” said Adrian Goide, captain of Cuba.

“We faced a very strong team of Cuba. Their attack and service are too strong. I think we could not get that under control. In blocks and defense we did a good job. We neutralized them and were fighting point by point, but in the end we could not clarify in the last five points and close. May be if we had closed the first set, this would be another story,” Dusan Bonacic, captain of Chile mentioned.

“We had two objectives; one of them was to qualify to the World Championship. We did it. Now we have to contend for the gold medal. This was a good match, very tough, both sides played hard. Tomorrow we will match Argentina and try to go for the victory. Chile scored four consecutive points due to mistakes we made. They are very young players and we had to keep calm to be back in the game”, said Jesus Cruz, coach of Cuba.

“We played very well in the first and third set, point by point until the 21 or 22 in both sets. We needed more ability to define in the important moments to close. Tomorrow we will go against Colombia in a classic South American match and we are used to play for the third place against them in the last tournaments we both have played,” said Daniel Nejamkin, coach of Chile.