Four teams unbeaten at men's volleyball World Cup

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Four teams unbeaten at men's volleyball World Cup

Four teams including world champions Brazil and hosts Japan remained unbeaten at the 2003 men's volleyball World Cup after Monday's action.

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Four teams including world champions Brazil and hosts Japan remained unbeaten at the 2003 men's volleyball World Cup after Monday's action.

European champions Italy and Serbia and Montenegro both claimedstraight-sets victories, over Venezuela and the United States respectively, on Monday. The two sides have yet to drop a set at the round-robin tournament.

Brazil came from one set down to beat France 24-26, 25-21, 25-20 and 25-22 and Japan defeated China 23-25, 25-21, 25-18 and 25-20.

The Italians were just too organized in defense and offense forVenezuela as they continued their positive start towards Olympic qualification with a 25-21, 25-15 and 25-15 win in Nagano to add to their comfortable victory over Tunisia on the opening day on Sunday.

Venezuela struggled to cope with the services of the outstanding Andrea Sartoretti from the outset and the defensive wall he put up with middle blocker Luca Tencati.

Sartoretti had seven aces to lead Italy with 20 points.

Japan, who finished a disappointing sixth at the Asian championship in Tianjin, China in September, started well in the all-Asian clash. Roared on by about 10,000 home fans, it raced toa 17-14 lead in the first set.

However, the Japanese suddenly lost steam after a 23-20 advantage while China ran off five straight points to take the opener 25-23.

Then the Chinese struggled with bad receiving and could not gettheir offense going as Japan easily took the second and third set by 25-21 and 25-18 respectively.

In the fourth set, Chin stayed within 20-18, but the Japanese took five of the last six points to wrap up their second win in a row.

"We had big trouble with our receiving today," said Chinese head coach Di An'he. "We normally have a receiving percentage of 65 percent, but today we only managed 48 percent."

"They (Japan) tried to find our big guys when serving, which made it very difficult for us."

The Japanese had nine aces through the match while China only managed two.

Yamamoto Takahiro converted 20 of his 39 attacking opportunities to score a game-high 23 points for Japan, 3-0 winners over Egypt on Sunday.

"He (Takahiro) did not play in recent matches between China andJapan. We were not familiar with him and failed to defend him successfully," Di said.

In Monday's other actions, Canada swept Egypt 3-0 and South Korea downed Tunisia, both recording their first wins.

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