VNL 2023: victories for Argentina and Brazil. First defeat for USA!

One day after falling to Cuba, Brazil secure a very important win ending the opening week of the Volleyball Nations League 2023 with three wins and one loss.
The South Americans secured a great victory over the United States to end their opening-week campaign on a high in Pool 1 in Ottawa, Canada.
Playing at the TD Place just 24 hours after their defeat to Cuba, they reply with a strong performance to defeat the rivals 3-1 (25:19, 21:25, 25:15, 25:21), ending their rivals’ three-match winning streak in the tournament on Sunday.
Rio 2016 Olympic champion outside hitter Ricardo Lucarelli led the winners with 19 points including one ace and four blocks, followed by opposite Alan de Souza, who scored 17 with one ace and one block.
Playing in the competition for the first time in his career, 24-year-old middle blocker Judson Nunes was also decisive for Brazil with 12 points, all in attack.
The United States, who suffered their first defeat in the VNL 2023, had opposite Jake Hanes and outside hitter Cody Kessel as their top scorers with 11 points each.
However, the higher numbers of American errors (32 to 20) played a big role in the Brazilian victory, but the South Americans also did better in blocking (nine points to five) and from the service line (five aces to four).

“We wanted to win very badly today,” Lucarelli commented. “We always want to win and to improve our level of play and we can only do that by playing. Every day this week, we came here determined to do better than we did the day before. The Americans are very disciplined and it’s always very hard to play against them. I think we had a very solid match, especially with our side out, and that gave us the stability we needed. We didn’t get a lot of time to practice together before coming here to Ottawa and I think we got a lot of confidence with the results we achieved here and also the progress we made in terms of getting to know each other on and off the court. There’s still a lot more to improve, but it was a very good first step.”

Before this duel, another South American team, Argentina, celebrated a big win in Ottawa, by beating the Netherlands in the tie-break (34:36, 25:20, 25:17, 20:25, 15:10) to end the opening week of the VNL 2023 with three wins and one loss.
Argentinean opposite Pablo Koukartsev was the top scorer of the match with 25 points including one ace, supported by Luciano Vicentin and Luciano Palonsky, who also contributed 16 and 14 points, respectively.
Outside hitter Bennie Tuinstra was the Netherlands’ top scorer with 20 points with two aces, followed by star opposite and team captain Nimir Abdel-Aziz, who ended the game with 17.

The last Pool 1 match in Ottawa will start later on Sunday, with hosts Canada facing Germany at 17:00 local time (22:00 UTC).

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🏐| 2023 VOLLEYBALL NATIONS LEAGUE

— June 11, 2023 —

Pool 1 – Week 1 – Ottawa 🇨🇦
• 20:00 (Local Time) | Canada – USA 0-3 (22:25, 20:25, 20:25)

👉🏼 11:00 (Local Time) | Argentina – The Netherlands 3-2 (34:36, 25:20, 25:17, 20:25, 15:10)

👉🏼 14:30 (Local Time) | USA – Brazil 1-3 (19:25, 25:21, 15:25, 21:25)

Pool 2 – Week 1 – Nagoya 🇯🇵
• 12:40 (Local Time) | Slovenia – Iran 3-0 (25:19, 25:23, 25:23)
• 15:40 (Local Time) | Serbia – Poland 3-0 (25:21, 25:19, 25:14)
• 19:10 (Local Time) |Japan – France 3-1 (25:27, 25:22, 25:21, 25:20)

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🏐| STANDINGS (updated on this day):
1. Japan 12
1. USA 9
3. Argentina 9
4. Slovenia 9
5. Brazil 9
6. Poland 7
7. The Netherlands 7
8. Serbia 6
9. Italy 6
10. Bulgaria 5
11. Iran 4
12. France 3
13. Cuba 3
14. Canada 2
15. China 2
16. Germany 0