Barbados remains undefeated

GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands, October 6, 2012. -  Barbados won 3-1 (25-21, 21-25, 25-22, 25-19) over Suriname to remain undefeated at the NORCECA Qualification First Round Group E of the 2014 FIVB Men’s World Championship.

Barbados has a 2-0 win-loss record while Suriname sits now at 1-1. A thrilling match with a very tight score in which the sets were similar, even though Barbados took the first set, Suriname pushed strong and was able to tie. However, Barbados dominated Surinam in the end with a small difference in all their stats, advantage (12-10) in blocking, equal number in serving points (5-5) and superior in attack (57-52).  

Once again, Shawn Simpson was the top scorer for Barbados with 30 points, 27 by attacks. Fabian Cox followed with 15 points while Akeem Payne chipped in with 14. For Suriname, Keven Sporkslede led the scores with 28 points, 26 were by attack and 2 in blocks.

Jamaal Nedd for the winners expressed: “We have improved bit by bit, Suriname pushed us which is pretty good for our team and I congratulate them, it was a pretty good game, it was good volleyball.”

“First I want to congratulate Barbados, I think that the difference in the end was our lack of experience compared to them,” said Roberto Javal, captain of Suriname.

Barbados’ coach, Ludger Niles believes they’ll meet again with Suriname on Sunday afternoon so they have to do some mental work as they are looking forward to the final match.

“We were off in our defense on top of the net, so there’s still room for improvement as they took advantage of this aspect and they gave us a good fight,” Niles said while giving credit to his second setter because he ran the offense well.

Jerry Slijngard indicated that even with the loss he feels it was a pleasant game: “We tried to prepare well but as you could see in the last points of each set the players of Barbados knew how to close and for this I agree that experience was the key and we’ll try to correct what we did wrong”.