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United States Men Too Much for St. Lucia
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado, May 15, 2014 – An experienced
United States squad used a 10-0 block advantage en route to
sweeping St. Lucia 25-13, 25-9, 25-9 on Thursday evening to
start the Men’s NORCECA World Championship Qualification
Third-Round Pool O Tournament being held at the U.S. Olympic
Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Carson Clark produced a match-high 12 points for the U.S. and
Reid Priddy totaled 11 points in the victory. St. Lucia’s Joseph
Clercent and Julian Bissette notched six points each in the
loss.
In addition to its blocking dominance, the U.S. held a 7-1
margin in aces and limited its errors to 13 for the match.
U.S. Captain Sean Rooney:
“It’s obviously a good start for us to get a win. In my opinion,
St. Lucia is a better team than we saw in September, the last
time we played them. It’s possible we might see them again in
this tournament. We did what we came here to do and it’s time to
prepare for tomorrow. “
U.S. Head Coach John Speraw:
“I think we were well prepared. I liked the ability of our team
to continue to focus. We’ve been working on some things in the
gym. We were able to execute those and that’s what we needed to
do. We needed to make sure we keep getting better on our side of
the net.”
St. Lucia Head Coach Kendall Charlery:
“We knew going in it was going to be a tough match. USA is
ranked No. 4 in the world. We are happy to get this match out of
the way because it figured to be our most challenging match of
the tournament. Our attack was OK tonight, but we need to tidy
up a little bit on our serve-reception. The USA has some very
good, strong jump servers. So that was a bit of a challenge for
us. The guys are going to pick up and we should be much better
against Haiti and Guatemala. We played Haiti last year in the
second round, and we beat them in the round-robin and the
finals. We hope we can have the same outcome tomorrow.”
St. Lucia Captain Jason Octave:
“I think we did alright tonight considering we are not going to
see jump-serves like that again until maybe the finals. The USA
is a very good team. They are a professional team. They have
some of the best players in the world. To be able to pass some
of those jumps serves was really difficult… I think we did OK,
and we can take some relief in knowing that we won't see serving
like that until the finals. It's an honor to be playing against
a team like that. We enjoyed it and we hoped to give our best.
(On playing Haiti next) We beat Haiti to qualify for this
tournament. We know Haiti ... We know their guys. So obviously
we are looking for a better result tomorrow than tonight.” |
