China's Dai Qingyao spikes against Yuta Yoneyama's block
Xuancheng, China, July 3, 2016 - China concluded their weekend of hosting the FIVB Volleyball World League 2016 Group 2 tournament with a 3-0 (25-11, 25-22, 25-20) victory over Japan on Sunday.
China used a balanced offensive line with Ji Daoshuai and Dai Qingyao each scoring 12 points. Japan’s Kunihiro Shimizu topped the scorers’ chart with 13 points.
This was China’s 10th victory against Japan out of the 27 World League matches between these two teams. The last time China defeated Japan in a World League match at home was in 2008 – a 3-2 triumph in Hangzhou.
The first set featured outstanding attacks and powerful blocks from Dai Qingyao that gave China leads of 8-3 and 16-6 at the technical time-outs. Unforced errors by the Japanese and a big spike took China to the victory in the set - 25-11.
China continued to ride the energy of the crowd and jumped out to a 10-7 lead in the second set. China’s "great wall" at the net posed difficulties for their opponents to penetrate, and led the way towards 20-16 and 22-17 advantages approaching the end of the set. An excellent spike helped China close the set at 25-22.
It was China that took an early 8-4 lead in set 3 thanks to those strong serves from Li Runming, who utilized a smart move to help China maintain the dominant situation and lead by 15-13. Japan kept chasing but could not catch up in the score. China won the third set convincingly by 25-20 sealing the straight-set victory.