In the second match of the second half of the Italian men's volleyball league Serie A, Milan, where Ishikawa Yuki plays and is currently in 8th place in the league, played against Monza, who are in 9th place, at home on Monday, December 26th (local time) and lost 1-3 (18-25, 22-25, 25-22, 22-25).
Yuki Ishikawa started in this game and scored 11 points, tied for second on the team, but was unable to lead his team to victory.
First set starting lineup
Milan
OH: Ishikawa, Ebadipour (Iran)
MB: Vitelli (Italy), Rosell (Argentina)
OP: Patry (France)
S: Porro (Italy)
L: Pesaresi (Italy) / Colombo (Italy)
Monza
OH: Marr (Canada), Dawyskiba (Belarus)
MB: Galassi (Italy), Beretta (Italy)
OP: Schwartz (Canada)
S: Zimmermann (Germany)
L: Federici (Italy)
*Positions: OH = outside hitter, MB = middle blocker, OP = opposite, S = setter, L = libero
The stats for this match areHere
Match Report
Monza's opposite starting player, Grosser (Germany), was absent from the bench due to a shoulder injury.
In the first set, OP Schwartz, who replaced Grozelle, scored consecutive spikes from the beginning, giving Monza a 3-4 lead.
From there, Milan also took the lead with two consecutive breaks, including a spike from OH Ebadipoul off OH Ishikawa's serve, to temporarily take the lead at 8-7. However, immediately afterwards, Monza's solid defense prevented Milan from getting side outs, allowing four consecutive breaks from a serve from S Zimmermann, and Monza took the lead at 8-12.
After this, Monza's OH Daviskiba hit three consecutive aces with a serve that varied in speed, and MB Galassi also hit an ace, putting them far ahead of Milan at 10-19.
Milan also scored four consecutive points due to the opponent's attack mistakes and a spike from OH Ishikawa, narrowing the gap to 14-20, but Monza did not let the momentum go after that with spikes from OH Marr and service aces, and finally OP Schwartz's high spike was successful to take the first set 18-25.
In the second set, OH Ishikawa started off by blocking OP Schwartz, but was immediately caught in a block himself, and then Monza's players scored consecutive spikes, putting Monza back in the lead at 2-5.
Monza scored with an ace from MB Galassi and an attack from OH Marr, while Milan scored with an ace from OP Patri and an attack block from MB Rosell, leading to a score of 12-14.Then, from Rosell's serve, OH Melgarejo (Cuba), who replaced Ebadipour, scored a spike to tie the score at 14-14.
However, consecutive blocks from MarOH gave Monza the lead again to 15-18.
Milan also broke with an ace from OH Melgarejo, but Monza took the lead in the final stages with a strong defense, with an attack from OH Daviskiba and MB Beretta blocking OH Melgarejo, to 21-24.Finally, OH Marr's attack was successful, and Monza went on to take the set 22-25.
In the third set, Milan started with OH Melgarejo and MB Piano.
Milan started the game with two consecutive aces from S. Pollo, putting them ahead 3-0.
S. Pollo's touch of the net tied the score at 7-7, but OH Melgarejo and MB Rosell scored spikes on a counter attack from Ishikawa's serve, putting Milan ahead again at 12-9.
Monza's serves were heavily targeted at OH Ishikawa, but Milan managed to withstand it, and with OH Melgarejo at the center, Milan was able to consistently score points and maintained a 19-16 lead going into the final stages.
In the end, MB Rosell scored a spike to give Milan the set back, 25-22.
In the fourth set, Milan's MB Rosell blocked OP Schwartz's spike, but immediately afterwards, MB Rosell and OP Patri's spikes were blocked by the opponent's blocks from a powerful serve from OP Schwartz, giving Monza a 3-5 lead.
After that, Monza's serves and solid defense led to counterattacks from OH Daviskiba and OP Schwartz, who scored spikes to widen the gap to 6-10.
Milan got side outs through OP Patri and Monza through OH Mar and the game progressed to 11-14, but MB Rosell blocked the OH Mar and then OH Ishikawa scored a pipe attack on the counter, bringing Milan to within one point at 13-14.
However, Milan struggled to get the last point, and instead, a spike error by OH Ishikawa and a high-speed, no-spin serve by OH Daviskiba blew away L Pesaresi, allowing Monza to extend their lead again to 16-20.
Milan fought back with a service ace from S. Pollo, but OP Patri was stopped by OP Schwartz, and OH Daviskiba's high-speed pipe attack gave Monza a match point at 20-24.
In the end, OH Daviskiba scored a spike to give Monza the win, 22-25, and Milan lost the Lombardy Derby to Monza, 1-3.
MVP: OH Vlado Dawskiba (23 points (4 serves, 1 block), 64% attack success rate)
Ishikawa was tied for second on the team with 11 points (including 1 block), with an attack success rate of 45% and a serve receive success rate of 44% (39 receives, 1 loss).
Milan now remains in provisional 8th place with 6 wins, 7 losses and 17 points.
The next match will be against Rube Civitanova away on Thursday, December 29th at 8:30pm local time (4:30am Japan time) with a chance to advance to the Coppa Italia semi-finals.
The report for the first half is here:
Post-match comments from Ishikawa
We didn't start badly, but their serve was very strong and it made things difficult for us. In the third set, our serve improved, so we were able to pick up the pace and play the game. In the fourth set, we started badly, but we managed to catch up once. But when they started attacking us again with their serve, we couldn't recover. Coppa Italia? Today's match turned out like this, but we have an important match in a few days. We beat Civitanova in the same match last year, but we expect them to attack hard in the match, so we need to be especially mentally prepared.
(Translated from an article on legavolley.it)
Thoughts etc.
It was the Christmas holidays and not only local fans but also a fair number of fans from Japan had come to the venue, Allianz Cloud, so I really wanted them to win, but it didn't go that well.
I felt a little more at ease when I found out that Schwartz would be starting at Monza instead of the monster opposite Groselle, but Schwartz was extremely good in this match and performed just as well as Groselle.
Schwartz is a player I secretly root for, so I was happy to see him do so well even though he was my opponent (laughs).
We previously featured him in our handsome men feature (lol).
The two outside players, Marr and Daviskiba, were also troublesome until the end and did not make any major mistakes (the sound of Marr's spikes was amazing even when watching the video...), and libero Federici's defense, which was his birthday that day, was also excellent (perhaps they should have awarded him the MVP since it was his birthday? (lol)).
I think Milan's defense wasn't bad, except for their serve reception in the first set, but they often had trouble scoring with one attack.
In that sense, Monza's defense was one step ahead.
Hats off to Monza's really solid defense.
Ishikawa was personally bombarded with serves from Monza, and he was receiving about half of the serves overall, but he still held up well, and even when he was thrown off balance by the opponent's serve, he was quick to get up and join the attack, which was impressive.
The same was true when it came to digs, and I was particularly thrilled when Ishikawa made a dig and then immediately went into the pipe to score when Milano scored the 13th point in the third set!
I did think that Polo was being sadistic by giving the ball to Yuki in this situation (lol), but I also thought that he entrusted the ball to Yuki knowing that he would join in the attack in this situation because of a relationship of trust, so I felt a small drama in it.
I feel that this high level of awareness to participate in the attack is one of the aspects of Ishikawa that make him world-class, along with his rebounding technique and serving.
But we didn't win the game.
I think there are many issues to be addressed, such as the serve reception in the first set and the effectiveness of the serves in the early stages of the match, but what I personally found bothersome was Pollo's toss to Rosell.
Rosell had a great game in this match, scoring 7 out of 12 spikes, but even when he scored points, he often looked like he was having difficulty spiking.
In particular, it seemed like Porro's tosses were often low, so I think that if he could provide higher, more fluffy tosses and give Rosell more attacking options, he would be able to come to better use his skills.
I personally think that improving the precision of this combination will be the key to the next race in Roubaix.
In addition, announcer Fukuda Kodai provided live commentary for this match on VBTV's Japanese audio channel.
I'm sure the commentators were watching the same screen as us, but even so, they were able to instantly glean a lot of information from the screen and they asked Yamamoto the things that the viewers wanted to know, making it a really enjoyable experience to watch the game, and I was really impressed.
However, I wish they had noticed Grozelle, who was out on the bench and had been shown on footage before the match (lol) (Maybe he didn't remember Grozelle's face...).
Anyway, unfortunately we lost this game, but the important thing is the next one.
Incidentally, Milan also won the same match in the Coppa Italia quarter-finals last year.
Let's win this time too and advance to the finals!!!
We will be covering the next race in Roubaix on-site!!
Next time we will bring you Ishikawa's victory interview!!!
Photo: Lega Pallovolo Serie A
English 
Japanese