Men’s volleyball Samsung Fire leapfrog into first place with five straight wins
Men’s professional volleyball’s Samsung Fire finished the first round at the top of the standings with five straight wins.
The team defeated Korea Electric Power 3-0 (28-26 25-21 25-22) in straight sets in their Dodram 2023-2024 V-League home match at Chungmu Gymnasium in Daejeon on Friday.
Samsung Chemicals, who are tied with Woori Card at 5-1 with 14 points, jumped to the top of the standings in set-scoring percentage. The team has been on a roll in its last four matches with a 3-0 shutout win in straight sets.
KEPCO suffered its third straight loss.
After taking the first set on a deuce from KEPCO’s Seo Jae-duk and a block from Kim Jun-woo that denied Lim Sung-jin a quick opener, Samsung Fire slowly pushed KEPCO back in the second set with its serve.
Three service aces from Yosvani Hernandez (née Yosvani) and Kim Jeong-ho (née Kim Jung-ho) gave Samsung Chemical a two-point advantage, but late in the set, the hosts took advantage of an unforced error by Tice Lesser (née Tice) and an attack by Lim Sung-jin that hit the net to take a 21-17 lead and book the best-of-three match.
The third set was all Yosubani, a powerful fixer.
After scoring back-to-back kills at 17-17, Yosubani followed Seo Jae-duk’s attack with a solo effective block at 20-18 and then took the toss from setter Noh Jae-wook for a quick open attack to split the KEPCO court.
Samsung Fire ended the match with an attack error by KEPCO middle blocker Shin Young-seok at 24-22 match point.
Yosubani finished with 25 points, including a service ace and two blocks, to extend his winning streak to five games. Tais was limited to 16 points, including eight unforced errors, as Yosubani took the match.
In the other women’s match at the Gwangju Pepper Stadium, Jung Kwanjang swept Pepper Savings Bank 3-0 (27-25 25-17 25-16) to move up one spot from fourth to third.
Pepper Savings Bank suffered their fourth straight defeat.
Hijab-wearing ‘Indonesian big guns’ Megawati Pertiwi (registered name Mega) and Giovanna Milana (registered name Gia) unleashed a pair of cannons, scoring 25 and 18 points respectively.
After dropping the first set deuce, Pepper Savings Bank trailed Chungkwanjang by 15 percentage points in team attack percentage and went cold in the second and third sets. 슬롯