Volleyball, Antropova super, Scandicci wins in Conegliano in game 1: 3-2 after canceling 2 match points

A crazy first match, almost won, then almost lost, finally won by Scandicci in the tie-break. After seeing a match point vanish in the fourth set, and Conegliano taking the lead at 11-7. In the end, however, the reigning champions Imoco, in their eighth consecutive final, lost their second match of the season, while the Massimo Barbolini, Savino Del Bene, after reaching the first final ever, cherishes the dream of winning the first championship. With a fury like Ekaterina Antropova, who proposes to the coach Julio Velasco for the Paris Olympics with 31 points, keeping the pace of a more experienced champion such as Isabelle Haak (34 points). Meanwhile on Thursday it’s the men’s turn, with game 1 of the final between Perugia and the surprise Monza.

The first set opens and closes in Antropova’s direction. His ace of 5-2 breaks the balance, and when Conegliano comes back, overtakes and reaches 22-20 he finds a bad surprise: after the attack of Zhu Ting, Ekaterina shoots twice from nine meters and gives Scandicci the lead, then completes the work with the fourth ace of her team’s 5, for a total of 10 points with 50% in attack. It is a very demanding pace to maintain, in fact there is a decline not only in the Italian team, and Conegliano takes advantage of it by rediscovering its synchrony which earned it the Supercoppa Italia, the Italian Cup and the Champions League final this year, with only one defeat suffered. The protagonist at the beginning is Marina Lubianwho helps build the 9-4 with three lightning aces, and then leaves room for the arm of Haak who begins to grind out his numbers: 10 points and 3 aces, all to close a second set in which Scandicci always remains distant, without break down the minimum 4-point lead that Imoco allowed itself before going on to win 25-16.

It seems like the start of a new game, in which the girls of Daniele Santarelli at the start of the second set they went 7-2 also in the third. But it’s an illusion, because Scandicci comes back to the surface, Antropova finds a powerful shoulder in Zhu Ting who makes all her experience count, helps her team to stay attached, and with a hand out finds the 19th draw which opens the way for the great final in which Conegliano is afraid, and they put in the net to make Antropova’s ball deflected from the wall go the right way: it’s 25-22.

Scandicci is in seventh heaven, and Conegliano is almost in shock, soon finding itself 4-7 down with a wall of Carol on Plummer. Santarelli calls a time-out, this set also travels for a long time at 4 points behind, but somehow the reigning champions chase away the ghosts, to find themselves fully: attack by Plummer, then by Haak twice, block of Fahr and Haak and it’s 20-18. Antropova isn’t scared by hitting the antenna, she reacts with a parallel shot and an ace. But Imoco is not only a hailstorm in attack, but also a wall that first stops Antropova and then Herbots and goes to the tie-break.

Conegliano is determined to exploit the good vibrations of the moment, in its arena, and soon goes 5-3 pushed by Haak and Lubian, then 8-4 on a block from Wolosz and at 11-7 on Haak’s attack which already seems like a sentence. As so many times in this match, this is not the case, even if Antropova misses a diagonal and it is 13-8. The 14-10 attack canceled out by Haak seems like just a stumble, Antropova leads the comeback well assisted by Washington who digs a ditch with the dunk that is worth the first match point, then also prepares the second which is transformed into a victory by Herbots.