Japan Women’s NT 2020

    Quote from Phoenix

    sitenoise do you have a list (or a link) of the girls that made the recent wide roster with Aratani? was Kubota part of it? I missed the whole thing... I'm gonna try and catch up

    2018 Makes me happy to see someone else besides me mention Kubota. She's got no U-squad experience or above on her resume :( but I think she's the real deal. One of the toughest girls in V.League. High volume receiving OP. I should check this before saying it but I think it's tough for girls who go to university to crack the NT

    So I did a quick check. It's not unheard of but the pickin's are slim in recent years:


    Liberos: Akane Yamagishi and Mako Kobota went to University


    Setters: Tamaki Matsui and Miya Sato


    Middle Blockers: Mai Okumura and Mayu Oikawa


    Swingers: Arisa Inoue, Yuka Imamura, and Uchiseto

    Speaking of blocking, I just re-watched the Asian Championships. There's a couple rotations with that U-Squad where they don't even use a blocker. When YOLO goes back to serve Hirayama plays OP and YOLO does her fake decoy swings from the back row :rolll:


    That probably wouldn't work very well against, say, China or Brazil NT :S although they did use it against the China team in that tournament. And lost.


    The Final against Thailand was delicious volleyball. YOLO and Yamada did well against Thai High sets but (along with Hirayama) had no answer for the quick ones. Thatdao had a run where she put the hammer down at will. Lovely stuff even if a few of them went long. Yamada never looked so good offensively after Coach Lovebunny finally turned things over to Matsui (Uni girls love their middles). Seki did all the setting through the loss to China and the Set1 loss to Korea. After that it was All Matsui all the time for the win.


    Quote from brahmin

    At the start of the match there were 159,000 people streaming live. Even at the end it was 133,000

    wow, way to go man version. I just noticed it's up for replay at VTV. Maybe I'll check out some of this super athletic variation on the game. Is that freaky southpaw Nishida playing in it?

    Quote from sitenoise

    2018 Makes me happy to see someone else besides me mention Kubota. She's got no U-squad experience or above on her resume :( but I think she's the real deal. One of the toughest girls in V.League. High volume receiving OP. I should check this before saying it but I think it's tough for girls who go to university to crack the NT

    Thanks!


    Kubota is somewhat of a diamond in the rough but I agree, fantastic reception. Bit of a heavy hitter though. When she spikes, the ball goes almost slower than it should. I think that's where she needs polishing. Hopefully she learns more from Osanai. Hitachi seems to be pushing Uesaka further than her but the girl gets lost too easily. I'm gonna keep an eye on Kubota.

    Quote from brahmin

    At the start of the match there were 159,000 people streaming live. Even at the end it was 133,000

    last night I went for the replay and ot was more than million views already. That's on YouTube alone, and no single National Team players was there playing. (correct me if I'm wrong) :lol:

    Quote from haru_12

    last night I went for the replay and ot was more than million views already. That's on YouTube alone, and no single National Team players was there playing. (correct me if I'm wrong) :lol:

    It's more of the anime's impact than the actual teams. Haikyuu the anime is having its Attack on Titan peak in Japan. Their hashtag is also occupied by Hinata vs Kageyama debate rather than the names of the players

    Quote from Phoenix

    It's more of the anime's impact than the actual teams. Haikyuu the anime is having its Attack on Titan peak in Japan. Their hashtag is also occupied by Hinata vs Kageyama debate rather than the names of the players

    Yes, the live chats are mostly talking about Hinata & Kageyama (& other characters) but still, I believe there will be more new fans for Japan's Vleague n their NT 😁

    Quote from haru_12

    Yes, the live chats are mostly talking about Hinata & Kageyama (& other characters) but still, I believe there will be more new fans for Japan's Vleague n their NT 😁

    Gonna be real with you, I don't like the Haikyuu effect because it completely buried the women's side. Majority of newer fans who are curious will flock men's teams only. If you've noticed all the hype right now is practically centered towards male players and hardly any enthusiasm for female players.


    I know the manga is over so the anime is about to come to an end too. My younger brother got sucked into it during quarantine though he doesn't share my interest in volleyball as a sport X/



    Anyway, where the hell is Miyashita... Okayama hasn't given any update. It's giving me major withdrawals not seeing anything from her

    Miyashita's popularity is very unexpected both in Japan and overseas. She's almost at Nagaoka's level of popularity. Maybe because she's one of the few who started out very young and got into NT at a very young age. She's quite the enigma but if I had to describe her I'd say she's an unassuming, extremely sensitive ice queen

    YOLO is not responding to my DMs beseeching her to put YOLO on the back of her jersey :white:

    Quote from forzalube

    Who is YOLO?

    Ouch ... that hurts :rolll:


    Quote from sean1

    Miyashita's popularity is very unexpected both in Japan and overseas. She's almost at Nagaoka's level of popularity. Maybe because she's one of the few who started out very young and got into NT at a very young age. She's quite the enigma but if I had to describe her I'd say she's an unassuming, extremely sensitive ice queen

    Wasn't the popularity still like that?

    1 Kimura

    2 Miyu

    3 Sakoda

    4 Haruka

    5 Yuki


    damn, ice queen :lol:

    Quote from zhutingfan

    Saori Kimura is still most popular? Wouldn't be surprised tbh.....


    Do you know what she's doing these days?

    I think she opened a coffee shop (or she's got a part time job)

    Yuki who? :)


    She's the only ice queen, and strangely, I love that about her because she has no pretensions of being popular, no fashion sense whatsoever, loves defense more than offense, and she's beautiful --in a stone cold mildly exotic way.