Cuba defeated Dominican Republic and will be the other semifinalist

HAVANA, Cuba, August 29, 2018 – Host Cuba beat the Dominican Republic 3-0 (26-24, 25-18, 25-17) and will be the other semifinalist next Friday at the Norceca U21 Men’s that continues to develop in the Sports City Coliseum.

In the first two sets Cuba managed to stop their opponents at the rate of blockades and serves, the latter more effective in the second, which complicated the reception and had to distribute their offense, but with the exception of Bayron Valdez the others don’t have similar strength in the attack.

That was the key to success despite starting the game at home with 14 unforced errors, 9 of them for service failures and having to overcome a dangerous 22-24 advantage thanks to a timely and combative effectiveness mainly in the service.

They got double digits for the hosts, José M. Gutiérrez (11) and the opposite José Romero (10), however the top scorer of the match was the opponent Jairo Pérez (13), followed by Bayron Valdez (11), both corner attackers.

Cuba ended up in attacks (42-27), blocking (6-3) and service (8-3), but more unforced errors (26-20).

Jesus A. Cruz, coach of Cuba, said that "unquestionably this rival was the strongest we had in the group and we are of similar characteristics, we play" hot ", but my team surpasses them in physical potential, technical level and a distributed offense in almost all the players and they depend a lot on Bayron, but they also had not faced a blockade of our height ".

Corner attacker Julio Cárdenas stated that "at the beginning we were a bit tense in the actions, it complicated us a bit, but we keep fighting and we won, and we will keep this delivery and disposition for what remains, which is the most difficult part".

Byron, the Dominican captain, said "although we lost 3-0 I understand that it was an excellent game, my teammates are very young, there is one up to 15 years old, we did everything we could against an excellent opponent, tall and strong, and It is the first time we face it, so I assure you that we can continue to improve."

His coach José Dante Mañón considered that "we played at a good level, it hurt a bad decision in the first set to go back when we were to finish them, the pressure was for them, the team dropped their heads and we could not recover, we were also affected by the reception, but we can beat them because we trained and we trained with our senior team that gets very well, we came prepared, but I think we are going to react because what we have is level games and that is what we are used to."

Thursday’s program only includes the two quarterfinal matches between the Dominican Republic-Nicaragua (2:00 p.m.) and Canada-Barbados (4:00 p.m.).