Japan Women’s NT 2020

    Quote from Phoenix

    Who exactly is Yoshino? I should probably check her out. Is this the #27 girl? the ones I follow on twitter were buzzing about her. Also the setter I'm least impressed by seem to have done well too.

    Yuri Yoshino plays for Saitama (signed in January of 2018). Just kinda popped up out of nowhere from a nowhere high school. She's #18 in this Smiling Ball Always Match.


    Kotona Hayashi is #27.


    I'm on the fence with Nanami Seki. She really sparked it her first season with Toray (2018-19). My observation of her is that she sets the ball better when she has to run after it, making a weird problem that the better the serve reception is the not-so-gooder her sets are.

    Quote from sean1

    Regarding Aratani, I think she's close to entering NT. International press wouldn't even have her in their radar if there was no hype around her. The timing of her leaving NEC to Himeji could be a catalyst. But I can't see her playing well with Mayu, everything is centering around Mayu with the exception of Kurogo lol

    Shiori Aratani is 173cm, same height as the 'short' Mayu Ishikawa. I had no idea about that. Just looked it up as I was watching these U20 matches. So the thought of her making the NT as a middle-blocker is unlikely. I've always thought of her as more of an OP (with NEC) but she's a straight up MB in these U20 matches. Her world is looking up, I think.


    Himeji is a new team that won three matches last year in their V1 debut. But I think they've got a good organization. Masayoshi Manabe is the owner, Yoshi Takeshita Vice Pres, and those two U20 dudes hanging about. They are doing everything according to the new V.League vision and I think they have money and will start pilfering more good players ... and eventually sign a big foreigner much to my dismay.

    Quote from sitenoise

    Shiori Aratani is 173cm, same height as the 'short' Mayu Ishikawa. I had no idea about that. Just looked it up as I was watching these U20 matches. So the thought of her making the NT as a middle-blocker is unlikely. I've always thought of her as more of an OP (with NEC) but she's a straight up MB in these U20 matches. Her world is looking up, I think.


    Himeji is a new team that won three matches last year in their V1 debut. But I think they've got a good organization. Masayoshi Manabe is the owner, Yoshi Takeshita Vice Pres, and those two U20 dudes hanging about. They are doing everything according to the new V.League vision and I think they have money and will start pilfering more good players ... and eventually sign a big foreigner much to my dismay.

    She's definitely not MB material for NT. Her specialty is leaning towards the offense. She does a nice pipe too.


    I don't recall hearing about Himeji in a long time aside from being Takeshita's team. I think she also wanted to get Miyashita in her team back then

    Phoenix since I love eating crow I'll share this about #27 Kotona Hayashi. She signed with JT Marvelous in February of 2018 and essentially took over the Final Round through the Gold Medal match. She didn't do very well but she knocked the Yuka's (Kitsui and Kanasugi) to the bench. I was all WTF? Who is this teenager? This is nonsense. JT has a shot at the Title and WTF? What are you doing?!


    Turns out, a month prior to joining JT, Hayashi had won MVP, Best Receiver, and the High School Championship with Kinrankai (grrrr). So I checked into this kid's stuff. brahmin had warned me High School volleyball in Japan is a big thing. He's right. It's amazing. He and theloneracer showed me where I could watch matches and I'm all :super:


    It's been great fun having at least some idea of who these kids are who come into the League, and/or win the U20 World Championship :cheesy:

    Quote from sean1

    Her specialty is leaning towards the offense. She does a nice pipe too

    I'm all about middle blockers who pipe attack! But, for the sake of others who've endured enough, I won't go off on Haruka Maruo. I won't even post this picture


    :P

    middles doing a pipe is only within their serve rotation when they are the one serving. My guess is that Araki is not doing that. She’s is actually trying to dig the ball.

    JVA is shortening the time in Tokyo at the National Training Center due to increased COVID numbers in the Tokyo area.
    They were expecting to go until the 23rd, but will now end on the 9th.


    men have also cut their plans as well from 19th to the 12th

    Quote from sitenoise

    Phoenix since I love eating crow I'll share this about #27 Kotona Hayashi. She signed with JT Marvelous in February of 2018 and essentially took over the Final Round through the Gold Medal match. She didn't do very well but she knocked the Yuka's (Kitsui and Kanasugi) to the bench. I was all WTF? Who is this teenager? This is nonsense. JT has a shot at the Title and WTF? What are you doing?!


    Turns out, a month prior to joining JT, Hayashi had won MVP, Best Receiver, and the High School Championship with Kinrankai (grrrr). So I checked into this kid's stuff. brahmin had warned me High School volleyball in Japan is a big thing. He's right. It's amazing. He and theloneracer showed me where I could watch matches and I'm all :super:


    It's been great fun having at least some idea of who these kids are who come into the League, and/or win the U20 World Championship :cheesy:

    Interesting. I'm definitely gonna check her out. Where can I watch those high school matches? Was that why Miyashita had like 11 documentaries made about her when she was like 10 or something.

    Quote from Phoenix

    Interesting. I'm definitely gonna check her out. Where can I watch those high school matches? Was that why Miyashita had like 11 documentaries made about her when she was like 10 or something.

    Miyashita was before my time so I don't know what her story was. She went to Osaka International Takii High School 2006-2008. They won Silver in 04 and 05, but didn't make the top four while Haruka was there. Info in English is tough to come by.


    Osaka International HS is where Okayama Seagulls get many of their players. There was a user here Ryu Takamiya who pointed out that certain teams align with certain High Schools for young players. It's unclear to me whether this is some kind of mafia thing or what :) but besides Okayama/Osaka, Hisamitsu seems to have first dibs on Higashi Kyushu Ryukoku (my team*) and Toray Arrows get Shimokitazawa Seitoku. The other powerhouse HS, Kinrankai, seems slightly less tethered to JT Marvelous.


    Watching those 2017 U20 matches above ... I notice that the HS team that wins the Championship (in January) seems to form the core of the subsequent U20 Squad (in June-ish). In 2017 it was Shimokitazawa (Kurogo, Horie, Yamaguchi, Iwasawa (L); 2019 was Kinrankai (YOLO (OP), Nakagawa (S), Nishikawa (OH), Mizusugi (L), Miyabe (OH). I don't know how far back that kind of thing goes.


    If you're interested I'm trying to gather some HS infos over at volleybox, here. Again, English info is tough. It's almost impossible to even know the names of most of the players except the famous ones.


    The High School videos --final round, anyway-- are hosted here. Unfortunately, they just blow away the previous year when the current one rolls around. I can't remember how I've found older ones, but I did bookmark Hayashi's Kinrankai win over Higashi. It's here, so the videos are still there but without any references to them that I can find. I think they've only been doing it for a few years though.


    That 2018 Kinrankai win over Higashi pales in comparison to 2019's Kinrankai win over them. It was an off-the-charts Tie Breaker. Also, the 2019 Higashi 3–2 Semifinal win over Ishikawa's Shimokitazawa HS was awesome. I can't immediately find those videos online (I downloaded them, though) but I think you can get to 2019's round using Wayback Machine. It bummed me out immensely that after the Higashi win over Shimokitazawa, instead of showing the joyful winning faces of my Higashi team the cameras lived on Ishikawa's crying, loser face because she's someone's sister. That's why Mayu and I started off on bad terms. I've come around though, and admire what she's doing now.


    As for the 2020 Championship, the Final was a dud even though it was my team, Higashi, that won. The Semifinal matches are the ones to watch. Higashi booted Kinrankai there, and sadly Kyoei Gakuen lost 2–3 to Furukawa Gakuen. A Final between Higashi and Kyoei would have been one for the history books. Kyoei was anchored by a couple Beach volleyball players, had a tall Chinese MB, and one of these Kawaii OHs--who's actually pretty good. I really liked them.


    [Edit] Here's 2019 Final , Here's the SF with Mayu's loser face. The videos take a while to load so be patient. If you use Wayback machine, don't even try to play the videos via Wayback, instead copy the URL and lop off the Wayback part. As in:

    http://web.archive.org/web/201…//sportsbull.jp/p/457108/ ... copy that and then just copy the Sportbull part <https://sportsbull.jp/p/457108> and paste it into a new window or TAB


    Having said all this (because I love to say all this 8o ), you should also just check out some of last season's JT matches for Hayashi love, and Saitama's for an intro to Yoshino. I'm not sure if VTV is still free to watch


    [Edit 2] FujiTV also has the last couple years HS Champ videos

    Ooh thanks for the videos ! Definitely the winning factor for first set was middle blockers, and Araki as MVP. She is basically touching every ball in defense when she is in. That is and have always been Japans biggest problem against other national teams. If they could get the synch and timing of Thailands setter/center duo they would perform so much better. Akutagawa is very quick but I feel they don't prioritize training center attacks.


    Kurogo is doing better then I thought she would in OPP, but still not good. Is it just me or doesn't her normally powerful swing seem weak compared to when she hits on left side? She hasn't got the finesse or the power in the jump either to compensate as Shinnabe does on right attackside. Ishikawa is scoring points on the blue side, she is doing good. If she got some of her brothers length and was like 8 cm taller and worked on her defense she´d be the best player in the world.


    Inoue and Kobata good as always, no problems there. Ishii has always been jack of all trades, master of none kind of player. But to me she just seems to get weaker and weaker unfortunately, I felt that in the games I watched in their division aswell. You don't see her at all in this game.


    Seki doesn't do to much I think, she barely uses centers for example and they are the best players in the court. Koga scores but with those hit she won't score against other national teams I think. =/


    Overall very worried, I don't think the right spiker will get better, you can see she is slow and worried about the injury when she is on court, will be hard seasons for Japan. :(

    @Yowwall Spot on. I'm still on board with Yuki, though, as the player who sits on the bench and threatens everyone on court. If they nap for a millisecond they're out, she's in.


    The most impressive things to me about the match were Mayu Ishikawa's serve and the way Kotoe Inoue casually dries her hands on her butt before she sets the ball :) Ishikawa's a rebel. She's fighting for a spot (she did all club season, too). The others seem either satisfied they'll be there or simply hope they will be.


    I didn't see the Hayashi/Yoshino love the blogger I posted above spoke about. But the best play of the match was the combo with Araki where Hayashi went inside close to the setter. Yoshino looked restrained, almost weak.


    Too bad the right side of the court (from the middle, including the MB) is an afterthought to Japan. It's not like they have Zhu Ting on the left to take care of things. Looks like they're not letting Coach Lovebunny change things up. YOLO, Miyu Kubota, and Shion Hirayama should be part of this action.

    Quote from haru_12

    this article is too hard to understand for someone like me :lol: all I can capture is Miya Sato n Haruka n Nakada' subs system. Just sharing here :rose:


    https://news.yahoo.co.jp/artic…0c8fb638073ad8a8d7c0adcd4

    Someone like you (and me) who can't read Japanese? :)


    I tried to google-translate follow it. Along with what I've read here about this issue from others, the article gives a pros and cons rundown of the "double sub", and in the end suggests that since Risa has retired and Nagaoka is an unknown, the role of the "opposite" for girls' NT is wobbly, and since Japan players are short and weak compared to other NTs they need to figure something out.


    Basically, when the setter rotates to the front it means she has only two front row attackers. If Nagaoka is the OP, you can hedge that shortcoming a bit with her as a back row attacker. With Risa, not as much. But Risa is way better at back row defense and serve receive, so you do a cost/benefit analysis. The coach may double sub, putting the new setter as server position 1 and the OP at position 4, hence three front row attackers again.


    The article points out that since you get only 6 substitutions/set, and you need to use two more to reverse the double sub, they must be used smartly and sparingly--usually at the end of games.


    They use the 2019.09.22 World Cup JPN v USA (2–3) as an example of where it worked out nicely. Japan was down 16-20 in Set 4 and double-subbed. With the help of Mayu Ishikawa's awesome kill block skills :) and some USA errors, Japan was able to come back and win 25-23 before Haruka had to rotate to the front.


    The article mentions that when Yoshi Takeshita was the setter she was immovable, and Manabe didn't sub her much, but a couple times sent in Nakamichi/Kano to good effect. And it mentions (this one I may have wrong) the Cuban Team that used to use two setters who also attacked (or two attackers who also set). Basically like if Risa and Sato either set the ball or attacked it depending on where they were in the rotation. The NoSmilers do that with Haruka and Mizuki Ugajin on occasion :super:


    It also points out that since each setter has their own style with regards to speed and height of the set, changing setters mid-set comes with risks (or benefits).

    I'm dogmatic and prejudiced, and since this is the internet I write about Japan volleyball like I know more than the Coaches and Analysts who've studied the game for decades :rolll:


    It seems obvious to me which (right-handed) players hit naturally better from the right side: Risa, YOLO, Miyu Kubota, Shion Hirayama, and to a lesser degree Miwako Osanai. All the other usual suspects who come up in the OP Roulette Japan often plays are decent but don't punish the angles my heroes do, and none of them swerve in for an occasional quick kill in the middle or do fake decoy swings from the back row :heart:


    Why doesn't Japan party with me on this? Seems like having an unpredictable WTF right side would be an advantage when you have short, weak players whose best chance of scoring is getting it between blockers, not over them

    Damn once I started I couldn't stop. I'm still in the middle of watching vids on youtube. When I searched a few names there's weirdly A LOT more content on bilibili than on youtube.

    A little update on Japan's 3 key players as mediaplayed by Nakada. The lack of their chosen setter is disappointing


    Miyu still sticking with her 50% forced autospeech. I was really looking forward to her comeback but again there's plenty of empty phrases here and at this point it would probably be better if she retires already.

    http://vbm.link/40822/


    Here's Mayu and Kurogo talking about getting stronger. Kurogo talking about Mayu and Mayu being eager

    http://vbm.link/40825/

    http://vbm.link/40816/