Press release

London, Great Britain, July 28, 2012 – One of the pre-favorites in this Olympic tournament, Team USA, stamped a 3-1 win (25-19, 25-17, 20-25, and 25-21) over Korea on Saturday to celebrate a convincing start of their Olympic campaign at Earls Court. This result improves USA record to 18 wins out of 29 matches against the Republic of Korea in international competitions and is the fifth American win at the Olympics vs. only 2 losses to the Asian ladies.

The first set was initially evenly matched with USA captain Lindsey Berg commanding her side’s offense and Destinee Hooker benefiting from her teammate’s accurate setting. On the other side of the net, setter Kim Sa-Nee was also quite confident and provided her best spiker, Kim Yeon-Koung, with some good opportunities to score. After a tight first half of the set, Team USA broke away by exploiting its superior physical power with the all-round game of Logan Tom and the blocks by Foluke Akinradewo helping seal the final 25-19.

The second set followed a similar plot with Tom and Hooker joined by wing spiker Jordan Larson in their efforts, thereby sending the USA clearly and comfortably into the lead that was maintained all the way through for the provisional 2-0.

The US Americans went to the front also in the opening phases of set 3 where Berg controlled the operations with ease while Hooker and Larson were the top scorers for the side mentored by Hugh McCutcheon. However, Korea fought back to 11 all via the spikes by Han Song-Yi, Hwang Youn-Joo and especially Kim Yeon-Koung. Kim was just spectacular by varying her solutions in attack and she eventually anchored Korea to the provisional 2-1.

Even though the start of set 4 was close, Larson, Akinradewo and Tom helped USA pull away from the pack and Kim was left almost all alone in Korea’s quest to call for a possible tie-break. This did not turn into reality as Korea faded and USA accelerated the pace to claim a well-deserved 3-1 win.

After a rest day, these teams will resume their Olympic campaign on Monday with the USA playing their archrivals of Brazil and Korea set to cross its ways with the 2011 European champions of Serbia.


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