PARIS — Bronze.
“We came here to win,” USA coach John Speraw said. “I’m very disappointed.”
You would expect nothing less from a team that aspired to win the Paris Olympics men’s volleyball tournament and the gold medal that comes with it.
Now Poland gets a shot at the gold while the USA goes for bronze against the loser of the later match Wednesday at Paris Arena South 1 between France and Italy.
Speraw and his veterans know the deal. In Rio in 2016, they also lost in the semifinals and had to gird up and beat Russia in five for the bronze medal. In Tokyo in 2021 they didn’t get to the quarterfinals.
The shot at gold was theirs for the taking Wednesday, especially when the Americans led two sets to one and led in the fourth, the last time at 21-20.
But ultimately Poland rallied to win that set and took the upper hand in the fifth to came away with a 25-23, 25-27, 14-25, 25-23, 15-13 victory.
“I’ll have to go back and look at that fourth set, but it’s what happens in these matches when a team is down,” Speraw said. “You’re up 2-1 and a team has nothing to lose at that point and they get very aggressive. And they got very aggressive with their serves and they were successful. And when you have servers like they have who get successful it’s very, very challenging.”
The USA got another fabulous effort from 37-year-old opposite Matt Anderson, whose performance in these Games belies his age. He led with 23 kills, hit .456, had an ace, and made some key digs throughout, finishing with eight.
He agreed with his coach’s assessment.
“That’s what they do. They serve hard and they put us in trouble and we didn’t come up with the points late in that fourth set,” Anderson said.
Aaron Russell had 18 kills and two blocks, Max Holt had nine kills, a block and two aces, and Thomas Jaeschke, who subbed for TJ DeFalco in the third set, finished with nine kills and a block. Taylor Averill had five kills, two blocks and an ace and DeFalco had four kills, hitting .133.
Setter Micah Christenson, who had seven digs, added a block, and libero Erik Shoji had 10 digs.
“It was USA vs. Poland,” said Shoji, who plays professionally in Poland. “We were in for an epic match. Tough how it ended.”
The fourth set was tied 22-22 when Poland’s Wilfredo Leon blasted a kill, aced Shoji and then Poland won on a kill by Tomasz Fornal.
The USA trailed 10-7 in the fifth and was down 14-10 when…
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