On Sunday, April 20th, local time, the fourth match of the Italian Superleg PO semi-finals between Perugia (Yuki Ishikawa) and Civitanova was held, and Perugia lost to Civitanova 0-3 (23-25, 20-25, 21-25). With this, both teams now have two wins and two losses, and the outcome of the match will be decided in the fifth match.
Yuki Ishikawa started on the bench, just as he has done in all playoff games so far.
In the first set, Civitanova took a 4-8 lead early on with OH Bottolo's spikes and blocks. From there, Perugia closed the gap to 12-13 with consecutive aces from OH Semeniuk, but Civitanova maintained the lead with side-outs from OH Nikolov's spikes. From there, Perugia tied the score at 20-20 with a block from MB Sole and a spike from OP Ventara, but then at 23-23, OH Plotnicki was caught by consecutive blocks and Civitanova took the set 23-25.
In the second set, with the score at 5-5 in the early stages, Perugia replaced OH Plotnicki, who had come up to the front, with OH Ishikawa. Perugia and Civitanova, led by OH Ishikawa and OH Nikolov, continued to score points, and the match progressed to 15-16. However, Civitanova took the lead at 17-21 with a spike from OP Lagungia after a block and defense. After that, Perugia continued to make serve errors, making it difficult to break, and finally, Civitanova took the set at 20-25 with an attack error from OH Ishikawa.
In the third set, Perugia took an 8-5 lead early on, scoring with OH Semeniuk's block and OP Ventala's spike. Civitanova broke with MB Sineniez's block and closed the gap to 11-10, but Perugia managed to maintain a 20-19 lead with side-outs from OH Ishikawa's spike and other efforts. However, Civitanova took a break from a strong serve from OH Nikolov to tie the score at 20-20, and then an ace from OH Nikolov and three attack errors from Perugia put Civitanova on match point at 20-24. Finally, MB Sineniez hit a quick shot to take the set at 21-25, and Civitanova won 0-3.
The stats for the match areHere.
Perugia suffered their first straight-set defeat of the season. They lost many points due to mistakes, and gave up 32 points in the third set, twice as many as Civitanova. This was more than 40% of Civitanova's total points.
In the second set in particular, Perugia lost 15 points due to errors alone, 10 of which were service errors. A certain amount of service errors are the result of taking risks and should be tolerated, but 10 errors in one set is too many. This meant that Perugia lost the opportunity to turn the game around.
Also, the loss of attack points in the final stages of the first and third sets was very painful. In the first set, OH Plotnicki was caught by blocks in succession, and in the third set, OH Ishikawa missed two consecutive spikes.
As for OH Ishikawa, this was the first time he played a significant amount of time in the playoffs, and looking at the game as a whole, he had a decent performance with 8 points in about two sets, a serve reception success rate of 691 TP3T, and showed his typical Ishikawa techniques such as feints and rebounds, as well as dedicated defense. However, he made some uncharacteristic mistakes, such as three attack mistakes at the end of the set and an unavoidable outball in the middle of the third set, and it is undeniable that he lacked his best.
Of course, Civitanova was great. First of all, in terms of points, OH Nikolov scored 15 points, with an attack efficiency rate of 78%, and OH Bottolo, who was on the opposite side, also scored 14 points, with an attack efficiency rate of 451 TP 3 T, which was also very good. Although he only had two aces, he disrupted Perugia's reception with his aggressive serves. It goes without saying that OH Nikolov's serve, which was the driving force behind the great comeback at the end of the third set, was excellent.
In the first set, they took five block points and forced Perugia to make attacking mistakes. They also defended the floor with a strong defense led by L. Bisotto, who was named MVP of the match. In addition, the fact that the original libero Barrasso, who had been injured, returned from this match as a receiver further troubled Perugia and greatly boosted Civitanova's morale.
However, personally, I think that Perugia was worse than Civitanova and that they destroyed themselves. Because they had never served so well and lost so many attacks in such important situations. After the third match, Ishikawa said, "We needed to improve because our attack effectiveness was low," but they were unable to fix that in this match.
From Perugia's perspective, the memory of their quarterfinal loss to Milan, led by Yuki Ishikawa, two seasons ago, with a score of 2 wins and 3 losses comes to mind. However, it is still unclear what will happen in the fifth game. And personally, this fifth game of the playoffs is the best part of the Italian league, and it is a great opportunity to see the "best volleyball" that Krek spoke of in his interview, where the teams know each other well and play against each other.
The fateful Round 5 will begin at 27:30 on Thursday, April 24th, Japan time.
Photo: legavolley.it, TOSHIKI
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