Resilient Brazil survives against Canada

LANGLEY, Canada, September 28 2012 — Brazil survived a sensational five-set battle against a resilient Canada to win 25-19, 25-15, 21-25, 24-26 and 16-14 and also qualified to the Men’s U-23 Pan American Cup final.

Jonatas Cardoso les five South Americans with double-figures in scoring with   with 15 points, including three blocks. Flavio Gualberto had five blocks among his 12 points while Leandro Santos and Alan Souza each had 11. Henrique Batagim chipped in with 10.

Trailing 2-0, Canada made a comeback in the third set behind the amazing blocking game of Daniel Jansen Van Doorn, who finished with a total of 18  points (9 blocks). Nick del Bianco and Bradley Kufske registered 17 total points apiece and Derek Thiessen 13.

“This was a very good but also difficult match. We had good serve and attack, but things went different in the third and fourth sets, after the good blocking game of Canada”, Brazil’s captain Thiago Veloso said about his team’s performance.

Canada’s captain Jarrod Offereins commented: “Tonight was an unreal experience. Brazil is the best team in the tournament and we were just hoping to have a good game and compete with them and come out strong. It was nice to get some momentum from the crowd. It was fun to have that environment.”

For Brazilian coach Leonardo Carvalho “volleyball fans had an excellent show tonight with an excellent match played by both Canada and Brazil and in my opinion this has been the best one of the tournament”.

Canadian coach Ben Josephson explained: “They came out really sharp and put us in a lot of trouble. Our ball control wasn’t good enough to play with them in the first two sets. But then we cleaned up our ball control, which forced them to hit the ball a little harder, which allowed our block to score.”