The 2018 FIVB Men's World Championship

USA Undefeated, But Not Unchallenged in World Champs Round One

USA Undefeated, But Not Unchallenged in World Champs Round One

After the first round of the World Championship, the USA men are undefeated—but the 5-0 record and a spot in the 16-team second round didn’t come easily.

Sep 18, 2018 by Megan Kaplon
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At the conclusion of the first round of the 2018 FIVB Men’s World Championship, the USA men are undefeated, but the 5-0 record and a spot in the 16-team second round didn’t come easily.

To warm up for World Champs, the Americans played a series of friendlies in Slovenia and played wonderfully, sweeping Iran and beating Canada and Slovenia in four sets. In Bari, Italy, for their first match of World Champs, Serbia pushed Team USA to the limit.

Serbia stunned the U.S. men in the first set, 25-15, but the Americans returned the favor in set two, winning 25-14. The back and forth continued with Serbia winning the third and USA the fourth. The USA then launched its offensive with a 4-0 run in the fifth and won 15-10.

The next night versus Australia, more of the same. After winning the first two sets, the USA allowed Australia to creep back in, win sets three and four, and push the match to five. Head coach John Speraw made a number of substitutions throughout the long match, with middles Jeff Jendryk and Dan McDonnell getting some playing time, along with opposite Ben Patch, but by the start of the fifth set, Speraw returned to his original starting lineup.

“I just think we’ve got better volleyball ahead of us,” Speraw said after the match. “We’re definitely not peaking early.”

Speraw’s prediction quickly came true. After a day off, the USA took on Volleyball Nation’s League gold medalist and World Champs favorite Russia and the U.S. men finally played like the No. 2 team in the world. With seven aces as a team and a match-high 17 points from outside hitter Aaron Russell and in the face of 13 points each from Russia’s Dmitriy Muserskiy and Maxim Mikhaylov, the Americans emerged with a four-set victory.

“In the end, this match was just about serving,” Speraw said. “It was about two serving teams bombing away and playing the game from 10-12 feet. That’s where we played a lot of the match.”

Two stress free sweeps of Cameroon and Tunisia followed, with the USA not allowing either team to score more than 20 points in a set.  

Throughout the five matches, head coach John Speraw did not playing around much with his lineup. Pin hitters Aaron Russell, Taylor Sander, and Matt Anderson, setter Micah Christenson, and libero Erik Shoji started all five matches, and middles Max Holt and Taylor Averill started all but one. Only the occasional substitution varied this group of seven.

Certainly consistency matters, and if the USA can stay injury-free and not get fatigued, having go-to starters should be a great advantage for the team down the stretch. Especially if that group of seven can beat a full-strength Russia.