A lot of people wants to think Serbia and China are the same team from Rio, but they are not.
Both teams are missing "key" players.
Without Maja, Serbia is a different team. She was probably the most important player, and Antojevic just joined the team after how many years? Takes a while for her to set a good connection with her hitters, and takes a while for the hitters to set a good connection with her.
Zivkovic was there but she never got a lot of playing time.
Another key player Popovic - Serbia played with Pusic and Blagojevic played as libero for the first time. We all know how important the libero is.
And even Brakocevic and Nikolic were important players to have on the bench, and Nikolic was the leader of the team.
Also Malargurski and Bjelica getting actually play time after many years.
And just like any other team they tried new players as well, Milenkovic, Pusic, Busa is still young. And remember in the preliminary round Boskovic only played against China, and before that Malargurski and Bjelica got the job done.
Same thing goes to China, they don`t have their Captain anymore, the experienced Wei, Xu Yunlin and Yan NI. And lot of these new players are just around 19 and 20 years old.