Posts by GianLucaBarbei

Quote from rbdfabio

This is not USA B Team.
The 2 setters, 2 OPP and Libero are part of the Main Squad from on now. And 2 of these OH and 2 MB will be part of the main squad as backups. They are missing only 5 players. ( Hill, Robison, Larson,Adams and Foluke).

China is just hiding their Game like they always do. They will only play their best in the Finals.

I also wouldn't particularly give much credence to the results but when you're missing 5 players in a 6-a-side sport that's called a B team...you could call it "second string" but the difference in my opinion doesn't need to be too pronounced.

Somebody get Gandalf, the stench of troll is strong

arrekusu maybe you're coming from a good place but i think it's pretty stupid when the person lacking lingual comprehension in the scenario is insulting everyone else. Firstly he references to a friendly match between China and a superleague team. While I may have cause to doubt the premise, there's no mutual exclusivity with the game between NTs that he also claims did in fact happen. Neither have you finally understood or at least acknowledged, even after I pointed out, that the 15-13 score is a reference to the semi-final match. Your restating your points and resourcing them is unproductive because in this scenario you're the one with the comprehension issue, not them, and not me.

arrekusu

You could bet your right arm if we weren't being polite for those who genuinely deserve it I'd take up rbdfabio on the merit of the substance, but on the technicality you mentioned the quote is referring to the Quarterfinal match which ended 15-13. I think the english may be a bit trippy but that's what it's talking about.

This is borderline topical but seeing the BRICS games I wonder what stature and magnitude they can achieve. Some sports federations are filled to the brim with, for lack of better word, racists. FIVB is fine but FIG is a dinosaur and I think that sport would benefit from a challenging body especially after the atrocity that was the Rio scoring table. Here's a quote from the now-retired President of FIG.

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"They've remained trapped in a robotic style of training," Grandi told AFP on Tuesday.
"They're beginning to change a bit now. Those who have kept pace with the changes are the Japanese.
"They (Japan) have improved the construction of their exercises, leaving behind Eastern-style choreographies to move towards the West, that is to say more harmony, imagination, creativity.
"I'm not criticising Japanese culture, which is huge, but they have built a nice crowd-pleasing routine for the spectators.
"They've moved away from tradition, and the Chinese should do the same. If they stay like they are, they are robots. They are perfect on geometric lines, but eurythmy does not exist."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir…ld-shake-new-low-Rio.html

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I don't know what potential is there but I think it should be explored in some other sports. For volleyball purposes I think it serves just fine as a U20 tuneup tournament.

Somehow I remember there being another Li Yingying game I saw but I can't find it... she should be good enough. I can guarantee she's not going to be Zhu Ting, but as before I wouldn't mind upgrading Liu or Yang.

Sun Yan. 188 cm, 68 kilos but looks closer to 60. 2001 born, just turned 16. Recently called and been training with the U20 squad. Some older footage of her.
https://youtu.be/IrT713RFkB0
China U17 vs. Supreme Chonburi

China U17 vs. Indonesia (starts 22nd minute)

Both games they got their clocks cleaned, quite naturally, because they're 16 playing grown women. I felt she was the best on the team and the coaches agreed so they've fast-tracked her. Very athletic, could probably be more consistent passing. Recently played one point (set point up 14) vs. the Brazil U20 and actually scored. That point is below.
https://youtu.be/x9sGovneEPg
Sun Yan vs. Brazil U20

Problem is that the team captain is the setter, Cai Yaqian, so I don't know how much time she'll get in the U20 tourney but I'd love to see her play instead of Cai. Cai is a hard worker, great leader I'm sure, 98' born so she's been waiting a while for her shot but...talent

Quote from ST2008

Hey guys, the Chinese NT won the Olympics gold medal. Thus, no need to overanalyse some specific players or debating with such passion. Personnaly I like Hui, but other players had their merits as well in the RIO2016 games. I don't think Hui will be part of 2020 roster. For all these, I think It would be more interesting to debate about players who have chance to be part of roster in 2020 games instead of debating about Hui.

Haha, we're done.

In a completely non-argumentative way, I do think she'll make the team. I watched her game like late May and she looks reasonably healthy.

It was a match between Jiangsu and like the worst CVL team Henan but they had Zhu Ting with them. Fans who bought tickets to see stars got their money's worth if only barely I'd say but JLP was there and must have been bored out of her mind because the Rio holdovers didn't do a good job pretending to give 100%. Gong scored the most but she also probably got three times more targets than anyone else. Still very inefficient, her athleticism may be a crutch for her and a roadblock to developing a larger arsenal of moves. Zhang was the best in my opinion but very lackadaisical, especially in the first half or so. Hui was good for what her role called for, did more than was asked of her but only a little more. Points for those three by a very rough count were 19, 17, 12. Zhu was also pretty lethargic, if not very lethargic, and her teammates obviously didn't help. Gong was the only one who you might feel like she really went for it.


I see Li YingYing and Sun Yan make the 2020 Tokyo team as far as young talent is concerned.

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they were equal in terms of supporting Zhu

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Kudos to Lang Ping for adjustments

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Zhu was the star at Rio while her teammates did equally good supporting her.

You praise JLP for "adjustments" but then you literally say that basically any adjustments would have been sufficient because all supports were equal. You even note that China didn't have a starting lineup, starting lineups changed from game to game. Do you think they changed at random? By your logic, I could be Jenny Lang Ping. If every support supports Zhu equally, then I could literally pick 5, remember to insert Zhu Ting and I win! Why are you congratulating Lang Ping? What even is there to adjust if every support is equal? Furthermore, if all were equal in their support of Zhu Ting, then each result from Zhu and from the team should have been identical. Now you could argue that you're speaking holistically and from game to game there is nuance but that is a horrible argument because then cumulative statistics should have been equal, game results should have been equal, playing time allotted both cumulative and ideally also on a per game scale should also be equal. I have no problem recognizing that everyone did their part, but equality is a word that will really trip you up here. Whether you argue instantaneous equality or holistic equality the argument doesn't make sense.

You don't ever bother to even remotely isolate variables for a controlled experiment or comparison. A win against the USA for you is probably no different than a win against Puerto Rico if it supports your argument. Lebron James lost to the Warriors, I beat the local schoolchildren at the high school 5 minutes from my house, if we have absolutely no nuance (or common sense) then I'm a winner and Lebron contributed to a loss. The reason I've been comparing the Netherlands and Serbia games to each other is because the variables are as isolated as reasonably possible. Losing to the USA and beating Puerto Rico to any reasonable person have no correlation and are in no way comparable.

Furthermore, you build a strawman and knock it down. The turning point I keep talking about in the USA game was a tactical turning point. I never said JLP inserted Hui and they trounced the USA and beat everyone else easily. I said Jenny Lang Ping changed tactics/personnel. She did. Saying that "well they still lost" is missing the entire argument.


You profess to have a real problem with detailed statistics because you want to focus on what actually happened but a post later you're still using per game stats, averages, cumulative stats etc. Real consistent there. Then you're real interested in what actually happened, not stats, but then ignore the fact that one combination was used. That combination failed. Jenny Lang Ping changed the combination, added Hui as opposed to Liu and Gong. That combination, against the same competition (NED/SRB), succeeded. That's what happened. No stats, not even box scores, just the view from 10000 feet. If you were actually interested in what actually happened, well that's that.

Then you say she had a bad day against Brazil. I really don't have a clue where you're getting at with this. Are you saying she had a bad game therefore she was unessential to the campaign? Are you saying she had a bad game therefore she is suddenly equally essential as all the other players? I feel like this argument is more an appeal to emotion than logic. Zhang was doing poorly in the most important game, the championship game, against Serbia and she was subbed too, is she equal to Yang Fangxu? Were they really equally essential to the eventual victory or do you think without Zhang they still could have won gold?

And please don't misuse the word freak because it is not a word used in performance evaluation.

I don't know if you are trying to set up a strawman where either a player contributed an equal amount to Zhu or an equal amount to everyone else but the former is not my argument and has never been.

Also, along the way you dropped my argument that a team can focus their attack on one star and still feature multiple stars. I think this should be fairly obvious. I brought up the Warriors earlier, I can do another example, maybe soccer since that's an international sport. Alexis Sanchez scored the most goals by double for Arsenal last EPL season and had the most assists as well. I don't believe anyone in their right mind would take that and assume that Mesut Ozil, Olivier Giroud, or Theo Walcott aren't stars, or that they're equal in contribution to say Alex Iwobi. Lewandowski had more than twice as many goals as anyone else on Bayern when they won the Bundesliga last year, I don't know anyone who takes that to mean Arjen Robben or Thomas Mueller or Arturo Vidal are not stars, and contributed no more than say Kingsley Coman. Hell, Dortmund's Auba scored like 4-5x what any of the other Dortmund guys scored and I believe Emre Can is a German NT starter among others. Same with Juve and Higuain, same with Cavani and PSG. A loaded team focusing their offensive attack through one athlete doesn't mean the others aren't worth their salt or are equal. That should be common sense.

Eventually what it's been drawn up to is that I believe there were other standout performers who were essential to the campaign and contributed disproportionate amounts (both statistically and in terms of "what happened") outside of Zhu Ting. You believe they were all the same. I can't convince you, and this thread has better uses, so I'm done. If you need to have the last word feel free to put in the last word.

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That's just fancy words and too convoluting.

Always very convenient.

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In the end, it was more simple than you can imagine. Preliminary Phase wasn't important. Liu Xiatong wasn't even a starter in the first serbia game.

She started the majority of sets...

But eh, we can all believe what we want. Time to put the thread to better use. Finished the BRICS games yesterday but was saving the thread for squabbles. Here's what I noticed.

Yang Hangyu - Pretty underwhelming. Some nice spikes but overall pretty inconsistent and error-prone.

Chen Peiyan - She had some moments and plays a good enough back-court game. When airborne reaches a good apex but needs to get from the surface to the air much faster, and increase hang time. Most important however would be probably like a 40% increase in striking power.

Yang W.J. (#19) - Couldn't find her on the U20 Roster. What to say, she was the best player on the team, but probably not a very high ceiling prospect.

Sun Yan - 2001 born athlete and only played 1 point against the Brazilian U20 but scored a point and here it is. I'm very excited about her. Wish she could start over the current starter, who is a 98 born.
https://youtu.be/x9sGovneEPg

Side note. I never knew BRICS had sporting events. I follow BRICS very closely but because of geopolitical reasons, had no clue they would add something like this, pretty cool I think.

Anyways, the Brazil U20 played like a warmup tournament in the BRICS games before the U20 Worlds. What did yall think about it?

The 2-2 wins were against Italy and Puerto Rico. The loss was against the then #1 Ranked USA. There is a huge logical false equivalence, as well as a basically just taking a chainsaw to the idea of isolating variables. Also, speaking of the turning point.The turning point argument is based from a tactical standpoint, not a results standpoint, though the tactical change led to the eventual result. Arguing that because the tactical turning point was meaningless because did not immediately manifest a result is a really silly thing to do. The only "turning point" in the Brazil match was for giddy and emotional fans, because as the logical progression would follow Lang Ping did not continue that strategy throughout the second round of the playoff but instead continued with the strategy from the actual turning point which was the one I labeled. Even within the Brazil game the Brazilian fan just here labeled Yan Ni's entrance as the turning point by mitigating Sheilla. However, what we both agree on is that the real second MVP of the Brazil game was Zhang, because she was the one who took over both the offensive and defensive responsibilities from Hui, not Liu. Your Hui Ruoqi heart condition argument makes her sound like a silver bullet which really only backs up my claim. Also, breaking down to minutes? Volleyball isn't even a timed sport. I know what you're trying to get at with detailed statistics but that assessment is really neither here nor there.

Then the continued attempts to purport equal support. They're grotesque at best. Liu Xiaotong got 2 points against Serbia in the first go around. Hui got 13 in the second. They lost the first 0-3 won the second 3-1. I don't know how for you that is equal support, especially considering Liu had 8 offensive faults alone in that game. The argument is tone-deaf, it has zero nuance. Statistically a team can win or reach a similar outcome and players perform at different levels of effectiveness and efficiency than each other. Just like when Zhang struggled and Yang was brought on to replace her. The fact that they won does not set all things equal, Yang in no way and at no point was equivalent to Zhang. I can throw in numbers there too. Zhang took over for Hui when Hui was struggling. Hui took over for Zhang when Zhang was struggling. Liu and Yang, obviously significantly inferior players, didn't play much of a role other than a stop-gap and a placeholder to allow the other member of the Freak Four to take over. If Hui wasn't there this run stops against the Netherlands. If Zhang wasn't there this run stops against Brazil. If you take voluntarily take out one member, say Hui, when Zhang begins to struggle, then you have the Serbia game. Not that this team cannot prevail in a single game without one of these players but we know empirically that there is no way this team could prevail with any consistency without them. Which leads into the 2015 World Cup insinuation. Obviously, with the formatting as it is and the teams that were present, Zhang Changning's big game against Serbia virtually sufficed. Put them in a multi-round playoff against high-level competition and the task becomes far more difficult.


If you're going to be consistent about your "But in reality, what actually happened matters" comment and set statistics aside, bringing back Hui was the the only variable that changed when two losses turned to two wins (see the isolated variables). This isn't to say Hui was the only crucial character, as I mentioned to Rains, Zhang is also a crucial character, so is Li and so is Xu. However, your argument that everyone in the rotation outside of Zhu was equal or performed equally has neither the backing of broad results or isolated statistics.


Meanwhile, I must apologize to Tomen, who was running a nice little thread before I came in and all hell broke loose. Sorry Tomen.

Rains of Castamere

My bad you're right, it was Liu Xiaotong that she replaced. I guess I'm one of rbdfabio's ignorant commenters

I prefer Yuan to Yan because...taller...faster...jumps higher...ok you get the point but in that case she was more effective than Yuan.

You think of everything through the Brazil game though, and I'd encourage a slightly wider view. Even before the tournament there was a long transition period which, had Lang Ping not undergone it, China would never even be a contender. She dropped some veterans athletes (some more voluntarily than others I'm sure) still perhaps in their prime and replaced them with a lot of raw, physical talent. That took guts, but Lang Ping has them. You also may be right about the heart condition being the reason they held off on bringing her in.

Against Serbia we were significantly longer and quicker (despite being longer) at basically every position so of course the blocking advantage was natural. It comes with the territory of being more athletically gifted that your opponents have to take extra risks to level the playing field.

The problem I have with the zero stars idea or the interchangeable parts idea is that these players who are being described as role players are stars in their own right playing in a very straight up, old school system where the attack is led by arguably the best player on earth. Calling them interchangeable parts doesn't demonstrates enough nuance. I don't know if anyone here follows basketball, but the argument is akin to taking the Golden State Warriors NBA Championship, declaring that KD is a star and the others like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green are not also stars, just role players or interchangeable parts. Before Lang Ping adjusted to bring back Hui the team was bad, period. Even once she did bring back Hui , Hui wasn't always good (naturally) and there were star caliber performances put out by Zhang Changning (vs. Brazil) and Lin Li. Hui Ruoqi and Liu Xiaotong are no more interchangeable than Steph Curry and Shaun Livingston. The Warriors pulled through with good performances from Livingston when Curry was struggling but that doesn't make them in any way interchangeable or equal. When Zhang struggled against Serbia Lang Ping brought in Yang Fangxu. Still, they're no more equal than Draymond Green and David West.

Why I get so passionate about this is that I'm really proud of a lot of the girls, because they're warriors. I don't think the word clutch does them justice because I feel the word clutch implies overperforming. Some of these girls were just stars doing what they do best when they're called upon to do it. I don't think the word role-player does them justice because being able to spike, serve, block, dig, set, and receive against the best is not a role. They absolutely would not have been able to win the gold without Jenny Lang Ping, or without Zhu Ting. However, I feel the data and the empirical evidence is clear as well, they would not have been able to win gold without Hui Ruoqi and probably not without Lin Li, Zhang Changning, or Xu Yunli. If you permanently replace Hui with Liu, Zhang with Yang, Xu with Yan, and Li with me you basically have Team South Korea. But all the media coverage and the fan coverage immediately afterwards was just on Zhu Ting and Lang Ping, it didn't leave a great taste in my mouth.

Chinese volleyball is where Brazilian volleyball was in 08 when you had Fabiana, Sheilla, Thaisa, and I think it's really exciting. The big focus has to be finding a backup MB to Yuan because both Xu Yunli and Yan Ni are getting up there.

We are getting really off topic haha but I saw you replied in the Chinese NT forum so I'll continue there.

My very first words

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Not particularly high on Han Wu. At the very least it would help if she could break into her senior squad, she's already 19.

I can see where there might be confusion, my bad. Her is the tipoff word because it implies individual circumstance as opposed to a universal nature but I really should have been a lot more clear, too much time speaking the lingo of HFboards will do that to you.

Those players are all completely irrelevant to Wu Han. Gong is one of the girls I call the "Four Freaks", athletically she is a real specimen with probably the best unassisted vertical on the team, and she's ~4 cm taller. Yan Ni is about 10 cm taller and she's a MB so she doesn't need to be as explosive. Ding Xia doesn't need to be explosive or tall as she's a setter, and even she has a crazy vert and explosiveness. Wu Han would make a very tall libero but the point is she's not trying to be a libero, she's trying to be a Wing Spiker.

As far as defensive stats go we were talking about per game stats and down the stretch stats, stats for games where Hui actually played. Just so you are aware, per game stats are always more important than cumulative stats as cumulative stats penalize players for not playing and thus are not helpful for evaluating efficiency or projected performance. Hui vs NED led the team in digs (9) and was second in receptions (6) to Wei, she led the team in Excellents (11) and serve receptions (18), and was second among front row athletes in sets (3). Against Serbia she was second in receptions with 8, despite only 1 dig, tied for the lead among front row athletes in sets (3), and again led the team in service reception excellents (11) and service receptions (13 ). Against the USA she tied for the lead in digs with 7, but Lin had 9 faults and Hui had only 3. She had 3 receptions, on service she was second in excellents and second as well in service receptions. Even in the Brazil game, her worst defensive game, she recorded a higher excellent service reception rate than Liu did in the very same game. Her impact was also seen on the overall scoresheet where the team was able to defeat teams that had beaten and thrashed them just days before, and the only variable changed was her. Your cumulative stats don't amount to anything because they penalize players for not playing more games, as opposed to analyzing in game performance. When she was on the court, she was easily the second best player offensively to only Zhu Ting and the second best player defensively to only the libero who won the tournament's best libero honor. She was rarely on the court for the first 4 games of the tournament, which is what I'll go into next.

Next, Jenny Lang Ping. She's not underrated, some consider her the best coach alive. My point is that she is human. She started the tournament sitting Hui, they got their butts kicked. She put Hui in, things turned around. A good coach can make adjustments and realize when something is clearly wrong or not working. Jenny Lang Ping is (better than) a good coach. She was wrong to sit Hui in the start of the tournament. She fixed that. You don't need to defend her initial decision because she herself reversed that decision and in the end went ride-or-die with Hui. I don't know where you think I think she's a bad coach. Of course she's not. I've praised many of her decisions, like choosing Gong over Zeng, but one of the most crucial things for a coach to be able to do is to adjust. She tried without Hui. It didn't work, she adjusted. She brought out Hui against Brazil, Hui had probably one of the worst games I've seen her in, she adjusted by pulling Hui and went back to something similar to in the 2016 Grand Prix. They won. She adjusted straight back to Hui for the Netherlands game, why? Because they're not interchangeable parts, Hui is the better player by far and she proved that. If they were interchangeable parts, they wouldn't have gotten wiped out by Serbia in the prelims, a game where Liu played and was atrocious. An example of a bad Coach, say the much maligned Karch Kiraly, doesn't recognize his mistakes, and as a result never fixes them.

About Wu Han, I hope the best for her too. However, I want to see her in the CVL before I'd think about her taking a rotation spot from Zhu, Hui, Zhang, Gong, or Yang and she hasn't gotten there yet.

I finally realized you didn't comprehend my initial point. My initial word was that Han hasn't made her Club team's senior side, Jiangsu Zenith Steel something. Yan Ni was playing senior volleyball as far back as when she was something like 17-18. Ding Xia I'm not sure about but I'm sure she didn't only make her senior club side when she was 24.

However, I do want to take the opportunity to talk Rio because I think the most common misconception is that Lang Ping coached the perfect tournament and Zhu Ting was the only star and everyone else just rode along. China finished the preliminary rounds in 7th place, just barely making the final playoff and seeded against top seed Brazil. They lost to Netherlands, and got mercilessly wiped out by Serbia. Many will forget, but Lang Ping coached both of those games. Zhu Ting played both of those games. They still lost, and badly. Lang Ping had tried everything and nothing worked.


The turning point was in the USA game when Lang Ping finally put away Yan Ni and brought in Hui Ruoqi. She was the second best scorer behind Zhu Ting in the USA game, and then in the game against the Netherlands, and then in the game against Serbia. More than that, she was an unstoppable force defensively, leading the team in serve receptions and consistently a leader in digs and dig receptions as well. She even shared in the passing effort, and went above and beyond the call of duty there. She was the difference between losing to Netherlands and getting wiped out by Serbia and beating both those teams comfortably 3-1, the difference between finishing 7th and finishing 1st. Hui for me is no doubt a star, and her CVL title only reinforces that. Along the way of course there were other big performances. Zhang came up huge in the Brazil game with a monster game. The girls I call the "Freak 4" (Zhu, Hui, Zhang, Gong) accounted for 182 of the team's 278 points in the last 4 games.


Both are not super athletic but at least Yan Ni has the benefit of being 192cm. Not every athlete has to be super athletic, Xu Yunli for example definitely is not, but to be both short and not super athletic is a bit much to overcome. Han should set her first goal to consistently make and play for the Senior Team at Jiangsu. As I said before though that will be a very hard task because Jiangsu already have Hui, Zhang, and Gong. Beyond that will have to be seen.

I think Tomen is right to think first about the MBs. Especially if Xu Yunli has to be replaced that will be the biggest item. Yang Hanyu wasn't very good in the BRICS tournament.

Quote from Rains_of_Castamere

Athleticisn is useless if you're injured. You're always back to zero when that happens. That's the reason why Lang Ping almost always skip the unimportant matches for her first team. She knows fully well that chinese players are easier to get sidelined by injuries. It helps that they have a very reliable team B too so they can get those results without overloading their first team.

Inexperience is more likely the culprit back in 2014, not athleticism. Last year, China was just better with tactics especially with the serve. They solved the problem of Brazilian MBs running around their blocks because of that and were conservative with the serbians that made them win the olympics and was more of Lang Ping's masterstroke tbh. Chinese are good players but if the coach was not flexible then they would have ended up with a quarterfinal finish instead of Brazil.

The 2014 team was .75 years older than the 2016 team on average and the starters I believe may have been older on average. A few principal characters were Around 2013-14 they began to phase out and upgrade athletes, from like Wang Yimei, Zhang Lei, Ma Yunwen, Yang Junjing etc. They wouldn't have ever come close without the changes. Going into Rio I felt only the US could beat them but I still picked them. They lost to the US but that was the game that turned everything around because Lang Ping finally shelved the fossil Yan Ni and unleashed Hui Ruoqi, reversing the outcomes of the prelim games.

I don't believe they would've beaten the US in a rematch but consistently throughout the back end of the tournament they were the bigger and badder than any competition they faced, and that's something the men's team has never really been.

I read Yan Ni here was part of the 05-06 CVL championship team. But even so, a player like Ding or Yan is just a role player off the bench. Starters, stars like the others and also Wei Quiyue made their club senior teams very early.

Well if you bring Wang Huimin into the mix you might as well mention Zhang Lei who played before that and was 2 cm shorter. They were replaced in their prime of their careers by superior athletes though. Lang Ping was 100% correct to choose Gong over Zeng, Gong is the better player. However, at this point, Gong really only has one move, that's a hard, downward spike. She's a freak athlete, very explosive, very powerful, but right now her technique is actually very limited. Zeng is more "skilled", she has a better top-spin shot and she can put more side-spin on her spikes as well or just a touch shot. Lang Ping went with the more athletic player and that decision paid off. That's what I don't really see from Wu Han. She is a good athlete, but not a freak athlete. And she's short.

What I meant by Li Jing was does Wu Han have potential to be better than Li Jing some day, because if she turns out to be an athlete like Li Jing she will be a very good club player but maybe not much more. I definitely hope the best for her, I just have a hard time sharing the anticipation.

From the BRICS games, Chen Peiyan didn't look bad but didn't stand out much either, she's 18 so she should at least try to make the Guandgong Senior team this upcoming year.

Quote from Rains_of_Castamere

Eh chinese women aren't really that fast but they are less injury-laden like they were years ago. It truly solve chinese plights which made them a much more conditioned team during the important tournaments.

I think the words you should be looking for are chinese male players are not keeping up with their female counterparts as they do with their current competition. You cannot really compare them with each other as the men's game is like a different machine from the women's game.

Well of course comparing men to women physically in terms of purely physical prowess is impossible, I figured the relativity was implied.

I don't think the Gold run had anything to do with depth though, or even going back to 2014 there was a lot of physical roster turnover around the time things started looking up as significantly more athletic athletes replaced significantly less athletic athletes.

But Ding is more the exception than the rule. Zhang, Zhu, Gong, Yuan, Xu they were all there by 18-19, Hui even earlier.


Even if she did remind me of Hui she's around 10 cm shorter, at least 10 cm less on the wingspan, and has a much lower vertical jump than Hui. An athlete like Gong may be shorter, only 186, but she has incredible athleticism, a freak vertical, explosive, incredibly powerful, Han doesn't really have that. She is more talented than Qian per say but I don't know that she tops out a better player than say Li Jing. Perhaps if she were 192 cm the conversation would be much different, but we'll see.

Quote from tomen

For my example, I should focus on Chinese male NT 2017 more than Chinese female NT 2017.
I could be thought to make the ad of China men's volleyball national team.
Of course, China men's volleyball is weaker than women's one.
However, it should be focused on by more people that like both men volleyball and women volleyball.
In the history, China men's volleyball NT was a strong team many years ago.
If its "mistake" is from the fact that women's NT got the world championship (WGCC, WCH, World Cup, OG) first, this is unfair for men's volleyball in China.
Therefore, though the viewers of Chinese male NT 2017 are always fewer than the ones of Chinese female NT 2017, I still keep my mind.

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This is sadly like a universal theme in chinese sports. The dudes can't keep up with the ladies. I love Chinese volleyball because it's amazing to see the sistas be the most amazing and freak athletic talents in the world. They're huge, fast, explosive, all the things we can't find in the half billion of us dudes.