World Cup winners China suffered their second loss at the Rio Games women' s volleyball tournament as they fell to Serbia 3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-22) here Friday morning.[Special coverage]
Tijana Boskovic had 17 kills, three blocks and three aces to lift the World Cup runners-up up to a sweet revenge for their 3-1 loss to the Chinese women in their World Cup encounter last year. Brankica Mihajlovic added 19 points.
Serbia improved to a 3-1 win-loss record in pool B while China dropped to 2-2. Both teams have secured their berth in the quarter-finals.
"Of course we must be satisfied and happy about today' s game, because we played very well," said Serbia head coach Zoran Terzic. "Especially I am very happy about the first set, because in one period China started to play very well and lead but my team continued to play with lot of concentration and motivation."
Serbia jumped to a 15-6 lead in the opener thanks to eight kills and two aces of Boskovic. The Chinese women managed to cut it to 17-11, but that' s the closest they could go.
It was hotly contested early in the second set before Serbia ran off three points in a row to overtake the lead 12-10 and went on to enlarge it to 19-14. Trailing 23-19, China surrendered the set to Serbia through two spiking errors of Liu Xiaotong.
Serbia continued their momentum in the third set as they quickly built up a 7-2 lead. The Chinese women fought hard to pull within 14-8 and then overtake the lead at 16-15 with an 8-1 burst. However, Serbia scored four unanswered points to go up again at 19-16 and never looked back.
"Our blocking was not efficient today. Their defense against Zhu Ting was quite successful while neither of our other attackers could come up big, so it' s very difficult for us to win," said China head coach Jenny Lang Ping.
Converting on 11 of her 28 spiking opportunities, Zhu emerged as the only Chinese player finishing in double scoring digit with 14 points. Yuan Xinyue and Zhang Changning added seven and six points respectively.
China will play their last preliminary pool B match against the United States on Sunday.
