Japan - V.League V1 (Division 1, Women) 2023-2024

    Quote from RETAKC

    I hope Ageo's coach would put Sasaki in the game instead of Kurogo. During the Kurashiki tournament and Summer league, Sasaki did well and was always a team cheer leader even when on bench. Midway thru the tournament, if Kurogo does not improve, then time to switch. Ageo's Horisako is also better than Kurogo right now.

    I agree Sasaki has shown some skills. She's been on the team for five years now. I'm sure no one here knows her name. I wonder what she is waiting for. Horisako is also pretty good, and she is fairly tall


    Seems a lot of teams have a few players who only play in their off-tournaments, and maybe that is enough for them. SAGA had Hikari Kato, even Imamura sorta sunk to that level for a while

    I just looked at V.League pages for both Miyabi Horisako and Miko Sasaki. Neither of them has registered a swing in regular tournament play


    Sasaki registered on 2018-01-16. Her zero stats start with the 2020/21 season


    Horisako registered 2022-01-20 and I guess never dressed last season because there is nothing there for her


    Yoshiko Kamei, was a high school hot shot who registered same time as Horisako but hasn't dressed either


    Saitama also has this 3rd year Uni Girl, Rina Yamaji, who's tearing it up in Uni but hasn't registered a swing yet either. They signed her mid season 2022/23, dropped her at the end of the season and then re-signed her this season


    This all seems a little Okayama-esque :lol:

    Quote from side.out

    I stumbled upon the topic by chance and I suddenly remembered that Sylvia Nwakalor is playing in Japan this season. I wonder how she's doing, it was quite a random transfer.

    Only a couple games in but it's probably about what it's going to be. She gets a lot of sets and kills them in the mid 40% range


    I like her a lot. She's about the same age and height as her team mates, which is cool, but she's explosive and exciting. Her team mates are, well ... not so much. Her team, Toray Arrows (in case you aren't up) is in a bit of a restructuring phase. Jana Kulan played for them for years, and they had a few NT members, who left at the end of last season. Their setter, Seki, current NT main setter, is still there so Sylvia has that advantage over some of the other imports working with mid-level setters

    Yeah. Ageo is collecting good players but just hoarding them and placing them on the shelf. Another one of my favorites is Shiina, she saw some court action while the old Japanese and Brazilian coach were in charge. Now she just participates in training and on club's twitter's posts. I've seen Kamei's spikes during a friendly match between Ageo and NEC prior to start of 2022-2023 season, she hits hard and her jump serves are good too. I wonder why they would rather stay at Ageo and not venture with other clubs, even at V2 league if volleyball is their passion. Sasaki is listed on each game as part of the 14-women roster; however, even when Ageo is playing weaker teams like Aranmare recently, the coach did no try to give her a few minutes.

    Quote from side.out

    I stumbled upon the topic by chance and I suddenly remembered that Sylvia Nwakalor is playing in Japan this season. I wonder how she's doing, it was quite a random transfer.

    Nwakalor averaged 7.7 points / set (27 pts per game) in her first 2 games. That’s the highest in the league with the 2nd place only at 6.5 (Annie Drews). Sylvia will carry huge load for her team.

    Quote from RETAKC

    I hope Ageo's coach would put Sasaki in the game instead of Kurogo. During the Kurashiki tournament and Summer league, Sasaki did well and was always a team cheer leader even when on bench. Midway thru the tournament, if Kurogo does not improve, then time to switch. Ageo's Horisako is also better than Kurogo right now.

    Ageo's coach was Nakada's long time assistant at Hisamitsu and one of Manabe's trusted colleagues so he's all about that NT vision. When he took over, Ageo's offense gradually improved. Unfortunately I don't see anyone else getting past Kurogo until they see that she's not making progress. I think that this stage is meant for Kurogo's revival.

    Quote from Sisko

    Enough with the off-topic fighting please!


    To be clear, VBdiamond did indeed reveal his identity to the mods when he signed up as he could no longer access his previous account.


    As for Rhaemon , we couldn’t find sufficient evidence to confirm whether or not they were the same user as the person with all those other deleted accounts.

    You might wanna check with sloth about that. She was the one who was kind enough to help us out during that time period. This rhaemond user is the same person that created all those troll accounts and continue to harass everyone in the Japan NT thread claiming to be some fake Japanese but couldn't understand a lick of Japanese and still thinks she's in 1552.


    They even posted the same active my account some months after getting banned the way they kept creating all those accounts using that method you can trace all her accounts in that thread. And their first post was of course talking about Inoue in that Transfer thread when Inoue was in France. It's so obvious. How does this troll likes the same Russian and Japanese players and hate the same Japanese players. It's too much of a coincidence

    Quote from sitenoise

    Only a couple games in but it's probably about what it's going to be. She gets a lot of sets and kills them in the mid 40% range


    I like her a lot. She's about the same age and height as her team mates, which is cool, but she's explosive and exciting. Her team mates are, well ... not so much. Her team, Toray Arrows (in case you aren't up) is in a bit of a restructuring phase. Jana Kulan played for them for years, and they had a few NT members, who left at the end of last season. Their setter, Seki, current NT main setter, is still there so Sylvia has that advantage over some of the other imports working with mid-level setters


    Quote from volleyb

    Nwakalor averaged 7.7 points / set (27 pts per game) in her first 2 games. That’s the highest in the league with the 2nd place only at 6.5 (Annie Drews). Sylvia will carry huge load for her team.

    It looks like she's having a good time after all. Happy for her, I'm not too fond of the player but she's a really decent girl so I hope she'll enjoy every single set of her experience in Japan.

    Quote from Phoenix

    sitenoise I think you mentioned this already but I just found out today


    Meguro sisters. I'm not familiar with both girls.

    Older sis Yuka was before my time but I enjoyed these younger siblings a lot in college. Really punchy

    Quote from Phoenix

    Are they really related? wow 3 sisters. How likely is that youngest one to join a V1 team or is she purposely playing in V2?

    They are! The youngest, Airi may have though she was destined for V1 when she joined Gunma as they had just won a couple championships and got their new coach ... but we never know. She was one of those Uni MBs who had a great slide and/but was as much an OP as MB, and that kind of shenanigan ball works better in V2, especially with Gunma


    My fave is Aki, who cut in line with Saitama against all those other hitters we recently talked about

    Nothing against Chitaporn but I wish Saga got Thai libero Piyanut instead. Hanai is rather out of the loop. The MB rotation at Saga is already heavily competitive for NT transition. I doubt Chitaporn would even get proper exposure once Araki returns.

    Quote from Hassan Kadem

    Nothing against Chitaporn but I wish Saga got Thai libero Piyanut instead. Hanai is rather out of the loop. The MB rotation at Saga is already heavily competitive for NT transition. I doubt Chitaporn would even get proper exposure once Araki returns.

    sadly piyanut has the worst placement luck so far among all experienced thai nt players. it's disappointing. it would be great if she also got the chance to play in japan