10-11: USA women sweep Brazil in World semis
The U.S. women defeated Brazil 25-18, 29-27, 25-20 in the semifinals at the FIVB Women’s World Championship in Milan, Italy. Brazil was 11-0 in the tournament. They are ranked number one in the world and are the two-time defending Olympic champions.
replay at
http://universalsports.com/video/2014-womens-volleyball-world-champs-semi-final-usa-vs-brazil/
The U.S. will play China Sunday. Here’s that link
http://universalsports.com/olympics/
Jordan Larson-Burbach was the leading scorer in the match with 15. Kelly Murphy and Kim Hill, both in just their second season with the national team, scored 13.
The U.S. women are seeking their first gold medal in any of the three volleyball majors – the Olympic Games, World Cup and World Championship.
WOW! Mahalo for letting us know, Cindy!
Only those who have cable or satellite dish can watch the final matches on Universal Sports. So it’s not so universal. For this reason I wasn’t able to see this thrilling semifinal. There was one highlight on YouTube, but only three minutes long. Yes, I was indeed surprised.
It’s ironic that Brazil was sick of silver. Well, they won’t get silver this time and neither the gold. At best they can settle for bronze.
As for China, I hope USA can reverse history as China had beaten USA for the gold medal in the 1984 Olympics, before 13 of the 14 players on this team were even born.
Wish this were the World Cup instead as the first and second place finishers would be the first two teams to qualify for the 2016 Olympics. Now USA is guaranteed at least a second place finish, but no Olympic qualification from today’s victory. Not yet. So far only Brazil qualifies automatically for being the host country.
The finals between USA and China will be shown at 11:30 AM today Sunday on Universal Sports channel 90 or 1090 HD for those Hawaiiantelcom subscribers. FYI.
thx Cindy!
I now eat my hat. I had claimed that USA couldn’t beat Brazil in a major match without Destinee Hooker and they just did. And then they went on to win a historic gold medal match in the World Championship. And Kim Hill won the MVP award. I recall that some of the bloggers here lashed Kim Hill saying that she didn’t have the power to be a starting spiker. Wrong there, too. USA surprised us all! Better start a new thread on this topic. I’ll comment again when the new thread is up.
USA made history today by claiming the FIVB World Championship gold – defeated China in 4 – 27-25 25-20 16-25 26-24. Brazil won the silver over Italy. As coach Karch Kiraly said the last time USA won the world championship was 1962. Go USA!
My bad – Brazil won the bronze over Italy.
6. KarchKiraly did not say that USA won a world championship in 1962. What he said was that it took 62 years till USA won a women’s volleyball world championship for the very first time. The first championship took place in 1952 when Soviet Union women won on home court. Check out this link from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIVB_Volleyball_World_Championship