Japan - V.League V1 (Division 1, Women) 2020-2021

    Quote from Phoenix

    What's going on with Sato?


    V.League officially lists her as Hitachi's assistant coach and they took down 選手

    The "player-coach" thing is popular this year, but maybe I'm just paying more attention to it. Sato's still listed as a player but I guess for the most part we won't see much of her.


    As you may know, I'm a Hitachi fan and don't understand why they are so underachieving for the squad they have. And I have predicted that this would be Hitachi's breakout year, and making it to the semifinals would have cemented Sato's role in the NT. I guess I'm dead wrong about all that :)


    If Keito Saiga (S) had showed up on a team that needed a setter I'd probably be very happy with her. I like her style --she's an aggressive left-handed attacker, she's creative and tricky with her set choices, and reasonably accurate with her tosses-- but I'm upset that she's moved Sato out of the lineup. She's 18 years old and bumps an NT starting setter out of the lineup?

    Speaking of Hitachi, there's a pretty good post game (Hitachi v Saitama) interview at volleyball magazine where Our Lady of Idol Land gets the floor. She talks about how good she is and what an all-around player she is :)



    On the Saitama side Uchiseto gets the floor and talks about having a eurotard-style coach who gets all emotional and angry with players. She's says she familiar with it having played a year in Italy. Then the coach addresses something I saw in the match that ruffled my feathers. Jaja made a service error and the coach was all over her. At least that's what it looked like, but I went into denial about it. He confirmed it. Fuck him.

    Round 1 Match 6:



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    I can't say enough about how cool Himeji Victorina is. While other teams update their blogs so we know what they had for lunch, Himeji is creating educational tools for junior high students, complete with 360 degree cameras so the same play can be studied by enthusiasts from different positions. Part of me wants to write this off as just something you can do when you have money, something Kurobe, PFU, and Okayama don't have much of. But the big Dual-Citizenship teams? NEC is doing great fan service, but beyond them, not much. And Himeji are looking for relaxing times:



    Make it Suntory times



    wait. what?

    Round 1 Match 7



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    Going to be an easy win for Toray, but I gotta say they are not picking the best uniforms from teams. They better put SAGA's black one up against Gifu and if they put up the NoSmilers plain white one I'll hack into their tweetbox and fill it with QAnon conspiracies

    Quote from Mapuan

    Can somebody who this girls is? She’s so powerful but with very good ball control.

    Merisa Valdes

    Quote from Mapuan

    Is she now part of the senior national team or still in junior NT?


    Her potential is enormous!

    She's a senior in High School. Her team won silver last year. I get the feeling she will go to university and not really pursue volleyball. She's never been picked for a youth team so far

    Round 1 Match 8



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    The only way Gifu loses this is if the election is rigged

    Watching some of the HS Prefectural playoffs. They are wonderful streams with proper frame rate and 720 resolution:




    And catching up on the 9-ball championships. They can only afford one stationary camera and no one to operate it, but it has a proper frame rate, non-blinding color saturation, and very few artifacts:





    Gonna be hard returning to VTV:



    What is wrong with them? It's not rocket science.

    Quote from Phoenix

    I made that assumption cuz they're the only active southpaw spikers (excluding Annie) I also wanted an Annie + Miyu interaction but we're not gonna get that


    Still, good to know lol

    Kurobe's Akane Ukishima (who jumped ship from Hisamitsu's bench to become a starter for Kurobe) is an active southpaw spiker. The irony is that Kaori Mabashi jumped Hitachi's bench to be a starter for Kurobo and more or less put her on Kurobe's bench :) She's a part-timer now who brings gusto. Batting 40% on only 69 swings, but those kind of players are important.


    And let's not forget SAGA thunderbolt Akari Shirasawa. Okay, we wait until she actually starts playing :cheesy: