This is Blair Lambert’s VolleyballMag.com men’s professional volleyball report, featuring Americans around the world. Got a note about a player or a comment for Blair? Email him at blairlambert2@gmail.com
The end of March and beginning of April usually means that playoffs are heating up in domestic leagues and European competitions. The biggest news is that David Smith is one match away from his third consecutive CEV Champions League title after his ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Kozle defeated Sir Safety Perugia in a pair of semifinal matches to advance to the May 20 championship match.
Smith scored 11 points in a four-set victory over the Italian club that had won the FIVB Club World Championships in December and went undefeated throughout the SuperLega regular season. Smith had four aces and six more points in the first two sets and the starters were all pulled before the third set because ZAKSA only needed to win two sets in order to advance.
Smith served 18 times in that match, twice as many as any other player. These included a six-serve run in the second set. Smith went back to the line with his team trailing 10-7. An ace followed by five more serves in which four resulted in passes at least three meters off the net and ZASKA built a 13-11 lead. That was ZAKSA’s first lead, which it never relinquished on its way to a 25-18 victory that clinched its spot in the final.
Erik Shoji, in his second season with ZAKSA, led with 57 percent positive and 29 percent perfect passes in the deciding match.
ZAKSA is looking to be the third team to win three CEV Champions League titles in a row since the tournament’s inception in 2001. Trentino won in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Matt Anderson and Zenit Kazan won it from 2015-2018. Before 2001 the CEV decided its champion by way of the CEV Champions Cup, which was a knock-out format. CSKA Moscow, from the former Soviet Union, had runs of three and four in a row. Ravenna won the Champions Cup three times in a row from 1992-1994. Karch Kiraly and Steve Timmons were on the 1992 championship team.
The final will be an all-Polish event for the first time in the history of the Champions League or the Champions Cup. Halkbank Ankara, with Micah Ma’a and Thomas Jaeschke, fell to Jastrzębski Węgiel in the semifinals. After falling 3-1 in the first match, Ankara needed to win in three or four sets to push the match to a Golden Set. A 25-16…
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