South Korean women’s volleyball suffered its second Asian Games ‘no-medal’ in 17 years.
South Korea fell to China 0-3 (12-25 21-25 16-25) in the first match of Group E of the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games quarter-final round at the Changchen Campus Gymnasium of Hangzhou Normal University in Hangzhou, China, on Thursday.
With the result, South Korea has two losses (draws) alongside North Korea in the same group, missing out on a ticket to the quarter-finals regardless of the outcome of their match on Friday.
In Pool E, China and Vietnam, who topped their respective groups, both won two matches to book their places in the quarter-finals.
South Korea and North Korea, who finished second in their preliminary group, started the quarter-final round with one loss.
It has been 17 years since South Korea’s women’s volleyball team failed to win an Asian Games medal at Doha 2006 (fifth place).
It is only the second time the team has failed to win a medal at an Asian Games, dating back to the 1962 Jakarta Games when volleyball became an official sport.
Women’s volleyball has had a string of bad luck this year, including the FIVB Volleyball Nations League (12 consecutive VNL losses), the Asian Championships (lowest ever sixth place) and the Paris Olympic Qualifiers (seven consecutive losses).
South Korea (ranked 40th in the world) could not overcome the height advantage of world No. 6 China.
While China (189cm) beat Korea (180cm) in average height, the difference was stark in spike height (318m-286cm) and blocking height (305cm-270cm).
In particular, the middle blocking duo of Yuan Xinyue 온라인카지노 (202 cm) and Wang Yuanyuan (196 cm) created an iron wall in the middle.
Yuan Xinyue and Wang Yuanyuan combined for 23 points, including five blocks.
For South Korea, Kang So-hwi (GS Caltex – 9 points), Lee Ju-ah (Heungkuk Life) and Park Jung-ah (Pepper Savings Bank – 6 points) tried their best, but it was not enough.
From the first set, the game was one-sided.
Korea managed only seven blocks out of 32 attack attempts and none of them were successful.
China, on the other hand, had four blocks and one service ace to close the first set with a double score of 12-25.
Korea’s offence came alive in the second set and kept the game close until the middle of the set.
After taking their first lead of the day at 2-2 on a service ace by Moon Jeong-won (Korea Road Corporation), Korea went up by three points at 8-8 on back-to-back Chinese errors and a service ace by Park Eun-jin (Jung Kwan-jang).
At 14-12, Korea called a timeout to halt China’s momentum and scored a point on an opponent’s service error before Kang So-hwi’s sideline push attack made it 16-12.
However, China scored four straight points to tie the score at 16-16 and then pulled away at 20-20 behind Wu Mengze (three points) and Yuan Xinyue (two points).
In the third set, South Korea fought back to 12-13, but conceded back-to-back points to fall behind by nine and surrender a 25-point advantage.
South Korea, which failed to qualify for the quarter-finals, will play North Korea on Friday for the fifth to eighth place decider after the first inter-Korean match in six years. 무료슬롯게임