ANAHEIM — In the end, Team USA wasted so many opportunities in a pivotal fourth set of its Volleyball Nations League match against Argentina on Friday night that U.S. coach John Speraw couldn’t keep them all straight.
“I don’t remember all of them off the top of my head,” Speraw said.
The U.S. blew five match points in a marathon fourth set that ultimately proved soul-crushing and let a series of early leads slip away in Argentina’s 25-18, 23-25, 23-25, 43-41, 15-12 victory at the Anaheim Convention Center.
“Certainly disappointed to have some of those swings and not finish it off,” Speraw said after the 2-hour, 36-minute match. “And so we’ll have to go back and try and learn from it.”
The U.S. players will need to be fast learners. Up next is a Saturday night match against France, the reigning Olympic champion.
“I thought of that in the middle of the fourth set. This is where this tournament gets really, really hard,” Speraw said. “I’m looking at some of our players and I just don’t know if we can roll out the same team tomorrow.”
Team USA was never able to find its rhythm in the opening set but seemed to take control of the match in the second and third sets.
“They came out pretty hot,” U.S. libero Erik Shoji said. “They were just crushing side out and also transition. They played great that first set, then we kind of settled in a little bit and started to slow them down a little bit and so they made some changes and we played well.”
The shift in momentum was due in part to Speraw’s decision to replace Jeff Jendryk with David Smith at middle blocker.
“We were looking for a little more offense,” Speraw said. “Jeff is a really offensive player and he was hitting .125 when I took him out, just hasn’t scored well enough. So I was looking for Dave to come in, maybe look for a little bit more of a serve, look for a little bit more experience against a team that runs a pretty unique offense, has a pretty unique setter. I think Dave did do that. He stuffed a bunch of really nice out-of-system balls. He killed some really nice balls but unfortunately had some errors I wish he could get back.”
Smith wasn’t alone in a fourth set that got away from the hosts.
The U.S. led 21-17 in the fourth before the wheels came off. Argentina had six service errors in the set only to be outdone by Team USA’s 12 errors.
“When we’re up on a team, especially late when they’re making mistakes we can’t mirror that. We can’t give them their points back that they gave us,” U.S. opposite hitter Matt Anderson said. “Those are the opportunities that great teams take advantage of and I consider us a great team. Unfortunately, we let ourselves down with those mistakes. The good thing to take away is (if) we get rid of those mistakes, we win these sets and we win these matches so that’s on us and that’s completely controllable by us.”
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