2019 FIVB Women's Volleyball Nations League

    from that stat it seems that Yuki Ishii is doing well. I haven't catch up with Japan game whatsoever because i lost interest in Japan altogether. Last year VNL they were kinda okay-ish. sitenoise can you sum up about Japan team for this week? Where is our fav, Koga? Did Ishii played THAT well?


    Sidenote; Yuki Ishii kinda resembles O Ren Ishii, the bad ass samurai from Kill Bill Vol. 1. They even have the same name: Ishii. Lmfao.

    Quote from akitoakie

    from that stat it seems that Yuki Ishii is doing well. I haven't catch up with Japan game whatsoever because i lost interest in Japan altogether. Last year VNL they were kinda okay-ish. sitenoise can you sum up about Japan team for this week? Where is our fav, Koga? Did Ishii played THAT well?


    Sidenote; Yuki Ishii kinda resembles O Ren Ishii, the bad ass samurai from Kill Bill Vol. 1. They even have the same name: Ishii. Lmfao.

    Yuki Ishii has just played the most. She's being standard Yuki. She plays well. Sarina Koga is a mystery. She had a lackluster season and seems disengaged from the game. She might be fading away. The only court time she's had this year (Montreux, VNL) aside from a serve sub or two, was the first set and a half against USA. I can't even remember it.


    Haruka Miyashita has had a young upstart setter cut in line ahead of her after Japan's main setters Tashiro and Tominaga: Nanami Seki. She's doing well for 19 y/old, a year out of High School.


    Japan's doing what most others are doing, a mix of A & B team. I'd grade them about a C for the week. They played youngsters against Bulgaria, A mix against USA, they always lose to USA. And then started Yuki, Risa, and Koga against Belgium and lost. Belgium played really really well so that was cool--if you're a Belgium fan, watch that match.


    There's been a couple newcomer highlights along with Seki, OH Miwako Osanai and MB Aya Watanabe. Yuri Nabeya has played a lot too, which is unusual. She hardly ever starts and finishes a match.

    What happened to Japan? They used tobe one of the top contenders for podium finishers. But now, they seems to fall into Korea level. Long gone the day of the 2014 WGP Japan.

    Quote from akitoakie

    What happened to Japan? They used tobe one of the top contenders for podium finishers. But now, they seems to fall into Korea level. Long gone the day of the 2014 WGP Japan.

    I don't know if I'd go that far, but I wasn't around in 2014 to compare. They were a heartbeat away from Semi Finals 2018 WCh. They just got Silver at Montreux with kids--meaningless, but still. They're messing around so far this VNL like everybody else. We'll see how it shakes out.

    pheeeewww... finally got some time to watch some of the matches of the first week. i'm most excited about the brasilia round, and i'm looking forward to watching some of the matches i could not catch before. first a big, huge thanks to sloth for posting the link to the FB page where these matches are hosted. unfort. for some reason, the FB streaming is a bit jerky/jumpy so we do miss some of the action (frustrating when it's the conclusion of a point), but at least the video quality is HD. fivb has another brit announcer in brasilia who's really good, i wish we knew their names (OTOH captain hyperbole, who our friend sitenoise loves, :-) is really awful, all those superlatives just masking his ignorance.). also fivb is so stupid, the replays are obscured by those huge graphics ("monster block", "great rally"), which totally hides the play we are watching!


    i'm almost finished with watching CHN x DOM. i think all those negative comments about DOM are a bit exaggerated. they were probably tired and maybe a bit mentally exhausted after beating RUS and BRA. it's certainly not true they have not improved at all since 2013. i think 2014 was their peak year, when they finished in final 6 in WCh (it could be argued they also had the easier bracket, but they did have CHN and ITA, and they beat the hosts -- although almost all their matches went 5 sets, i.e. their victories against CRO, BEL, GER, and a tough loss to JPN, when it didn't mean anything anyway. OTOH the other bracket had US, BRA, TUR, SRB, RUS). since then, they did regress a bit, but it was a very close match with CHN, which btw, yes, it's a C squad but still very dangerous. this C squad beat POL in montreux, remember? and scary as it sounds, it could easily beat A teams from ARG, MEX, KAZ, KEN, etc. heck, i think they could beat THA and BEL right now.


    i was impressed by the new DOM libero, larysmer martinez, she played really well, her defense is good, she scrambled really well in backcourt and her commitment was admirable. her sets in transition were good too (a highlight, set point in first set, all dominicans on the ground for defense, larysmer back sets with a bump set to de la cruz in backrow, who crushes it). speaking of libero, where are castillo, binet and w. fernandez?


    OTOH i'm not sure what kwiek sees in the new MB, MF rodriguez, who came in 2nd set for jineiry m. she barely got any sets from marte all match, and she didn't really do much, she doesn't seem to move well either and was mostly a zero. he could have used eve, i guess? where are fersola and valdez?


    i really liked arias, returning to NT after a few years. her connection with marte has really improved, which i think has grown her confidence, and she had a lot of kills and blocks.


    de la cruz struggled a bit with reception, but oh my goodness, her offense is still incredible. brayelin m. also attacked and blocked well.


    rivera apparently hurt her ankle, so it was a mystery why she was on court. i'm sure pena could have contributed more. rivera barely had any kills and she had trouble moving on court. her reception wasn't great sometimes either.


    on the other side, a similar thing with zeng chunlei. she hurt her knee and went out for a while, but then she returned. you could see she was not moving well -- why risk further injury? i guess coach an jiajie really wanted her to stabilize passing? all CHN OPP (zeng, du qingqing, zheng yixin) seem to be able to receive serve, but i guess zeng is (like rivera) essential for that, not to mention their leadership.


    duan fang, who struggled in some matches in montreux and brasilia, really came on her own in this match. she was really incredible. diao linyu, yang hanyu, liu yanhan, lin li, were all amazing too, and hu mingyuan also did some damage in attacking the back slide. i also liked du in the few minutes she played.

    Quote from sitenoise

    I don't know if I'd go that far, but I wasn't around in 2014 to compare. They were a heartbeat away from Semi Finals 2018 WCh. They just got Silver at Montreux with kids--meaningless, but still. They're messing around so far this VNL like everybody else. We'll see how it shakes out.

    gurl you need to go to YouTube and look for WGP 2014 final round. Japan played the Hybrid 6 system with Miyashita as setter. Yuko Sano was amazing, Saori was amazing, Nagaoka was amazing. one of their best performances, losing only to Brazil.

    Quote from ossubtus

    oh please, let's not bring up 2018 WCh. they were a heartbeat away from not making final 6, remember?

    I think so. That's how it works. After winning the set from Brazil to qualify, they take out Araki and Shinnabe. If Serbia hadn't been douchey and gifted them that opportunity, they'd have left them in and beat Brazil. It's all heartbeats.


    goodness gracious, CHN goes from C team to A team, bringing out all the big guns.


    they have such a surplus of good players. i'm really impressed in brasilia with yang hanyu. she doesn't seem to do the backslide but her attack in front of the setter is remarkable by how quick she adjusts her arm swing. she never seems to fully extend her arm so the set looks like it's too low, but she just snaps her arm and hits it so fast that the blockers can't get to her. i don't think she got blocked many times (as compared to the other MB, hu).

    Quote from akitoakie

    gurl you need to go to YouTube and look for WGP 2014 final round. Japan played the Hybrid 6 system with Miyashita as setter. Yuko Sano was amazing, Saori was amazing, Nagaoka was amazing. one of their best performances, losing only to Brazil.

    I have watched and enjoyed a bunch of those matches that I could find. But it's different when you know the outcome. I didn't have any anticipation or wonder about how they would do. Today's Japan Squad doesn't have "amazing" players but they're doing okay. Funny that I look back at some of that era and get mad at Nagaoka for pushing my beloved Saori Sakoda out a bit. They went back and forth, but Sakoda is still my all time Favorite Japanese player.

    Quote from ossubtus

    i also liked du in the few minutes she played.

    She's played more than she played in that match. I've liked DU more than Fang Duan but I've been alone in that. Du's been trash talked here and there. On the other hand I think everyone has been impressed with Yang han yu. You describe her well.

    sakoda i only remember from WCh 2014 x DOM, she basically killed DOM with her backrow attacks.


    the thing with JPN is, after their peak in 2012, they have not had the same quality since then. and btw, did anyone notice how short they are right now? they've gone backwards in height. their MBs and OPPs are 176 cm!!!!! as far back as beijing 2008, they had kimura, araki, sugiyama and kurihara, these were all 184-187 cm tall! in that team, only shin and takeshita were short.


    in the current team, excepting iwasaka, the tallest players are 180 cm tall (kurogo, ishii, akutagawa).

    Looks like FIVB has figured a way to circumvent my download method. They split off the audio. So I can get the videos still, but it comes without the audio--which is a plus in the case of the matches that Captain Hyperbole calls but I wanted the CHN v BRA match :(


    In need of a new method :sos:

    Quote from sitenoise

    Looks like FIVB has figured a way to circumvent my download method. They split off the audio. So I can get the videos still, but it comes without the audio--which is a plus in the case of the matches that Captain Hyperbole calls but I wanted the CHN v BRA match :(


    In need of a new method :sos:

    Teach me, senpai!


    Been watching the match from that fB page and it was HQ stream with good commentator. Any possible way to get replay?

    Quote from ossubtus

    dude, go to the FB page that sloth told us about. it's great to catch the videos with the good announcer.

    I can still watch all the matches with my FiveBuh subscription but I like to download the ones i really enjoy for keepsakes.


    I like to watch the ones I haven’t seen offline to avoid herky jerky streaming, and I can skip around more easily.


    I’m so against Facebook I have my computer set up at the system level to deny all connections to it.


    Thanks for the reminder, though. I may have to go to the dark side. :(