MATCH INFO

Kumamoto, Japan, November 24, 2011 - The fourth-ranked USA team opened second round 2011 FIVB Men's World Cup play on Thursday with a win over Egypt. The victory now gives the USA a 2-2 record as they move on to a tougher match against Italy tomorrow.

Egypt captain Ashraf Abouelhassan: I’d like to congratulate the USA team. Today the match was a little difficult for us. They used their serve to put a lot of pressure on us, and that didn’t give us space or any opportunity to play. But we did our best during the match to recover and when we received better we played parts of the match well.

Egypt coach Sherif El-shemerly: I’d like to congratulate my friend Alan [Knipe]. I hope he has great success in his next matches. Today we played in front of a big team and I respect them a lot; our team does also. They put us under pressure with their serve today, and we had troubles in reception. Our team is nervous and in a bad situation, with the critical situation in Egypt. Many players are thinking about their families and are not in a good mood and very nervous. We lost many serves. In the third we did have a positive with another newcomer starting to play, Mostafa [Mohammed Issa]. Before we had number 11 [Ahmed Afifi]. Step-by-step we have new players joining the team [on the court], building for the future. Good luck to USA team and Alan, I hope they can win the next match and take three wins to next round.

USA captain Clayton Stanley: We’d like to wish Egypt good luck in their upcoming games. As their captain said, we put pressure on them with our serve, and got their passing in some trouble. We took advantage of their missed serving, and offensively we were more balanced. We got good numbers from all hitters.

Will they make any changes to prepare for Italy tomorrow? As far as any changes, I don’t think we need to change a whole lot. Like today we need to press with our serve, take care of reception and maintain a balanced offense… And we need to make sure to close the seams on our blocks on the outside.

USA coach Alan Knipe: I’d like to thank Sherif for his kind comments about our team. We obviously feel the same respect for them, and we feel for the things they’ve been through in this year. We wish them the best in this tournament and also wish them the best as they transition as a country...We had better distribution with more players involved today. There was good passing, and [Brian] Thornton did a good job getting others involved. When Clay [Stanley] serves well it gives a big advantage on blocking and defense. Egypt is a good team, and their number four is a great player who put up good numbers and had a very good match. For us, this is a good match to build on as we prepare for Italy. I wish Egypt the best in the rest of the tournament.

On setter Brian Thornton: My impression on Brian is same as it has been all summer long. This is not his first time… he set the majority of the World League tournament for us this year, and he’s a very capable setter. This is consistent with how he has done in the past. We have two good setters and both have their strengths. But no, I wasn’t surprised with Brian’s good play tonight.

On Matt Anderson and Paul Lotman: Tonight’s match was an opportunity for us to play Paul Lotman who hasn’t had a chance to play yet. He’s a capable outside hitter, and an opportunity came to change Matt and Paul and let Matt rest and be fresh for Italy. But more importantly it was an opportunity to play someone we have a lot of confidence in and that’s Paul.