Recapping the women’s volleyball quarterfinals on Tuesday at the 2016 Rio Olympics, including a stunning upset of Brazil.
The knockout stages of the women’s volleyball tournament at the 2016 Rio Olympics got off to a thrilling start with a number of surprises in Tuesday’s quarterfinals.
Team USA maintained its perfect record in the tournament with a 25-16, 25-23, 25-22 sweep of Japan to move on to the semifinals. Kim Hill had 19 points to lead the Americans, who had to hold off a furious rally from Japan in the third set to complete the sweep. The United States may still not have played its best volleyball yet despite the perfect record, and will need to cut down on errors in the medal stages after piling up 19 against Japan.
Serbia continued its impressive run with an easy sweep over Russia, which finished the pool stage with a record of 4-1. The Serbians blew the Russians away 25-9 and were never seriously threatened thanks to 20 points from Tijana Boskovic.
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While Serbia is a surprise, the biggest shock of the tournament has been the Netherlands. The Dutch kept rolling with a 3-1 win over a solid South Korean squad, putting away the match 25-20 in the fourth set after losing the third. Lonneke Slöetjes had one of the top performances of the round with 23 points.
The night closed with the best match-up of the day on paper between undefeated Brazil and China. While the third-ranked Chinese finished pool play with a disappointing seven points, they appeared to be one of the few squads with enough talent to challenge the hosts.
That proved to be true on Tuesday night, as the Chinese bounced back from a first set loss by impressively winning the next two. Brazil looked to be in trouble down 12-9 early in the fourth, but rallied to win 25-22 as mistakes piled up for China to set up a winner-take-all fifth set.
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After the score was tied 10-10, China impressively pulled away 15-10 to move on to the semifinals and stun the large home crowd. Ting Zhu put on the performance of the tournament with 28 points to deny Brazil a seventh straight appearance in the semifinals.