Quick news: 4 Games down, 2 Games to go. No surprise, Italy, Serbia, Germany and Netherlands to quarterfinals.

[13 Sept]

Day 2 of the Round of 16, Italy, Serbia, Germany and the Netherlands a through to the quarterfinals. Italy and Germany are pretty dominant through out the game, especially with Italy playing with a lot of ease against Latvia. However, the game for Serbia and Turkey and The Netherlands and Portugal have to play a fifth set decider to determined the spot for the Quarterfinals.

Italy started the game with their full line up. Latvia was neck and neck with Italy, until Italy started to breakdown the reception of Latvia. Latvia was unable to match Italy after their reception was broken down. None of the Latvia players are able to score double digits and the aggregate attack stats showed that out the 78 attempts, 23 kills at success rate is 29% and 0 efficiency, they got blocked 12 times and they made 11 errors. The top scorer is Daniele Lavia, scored 13 points, 11 attacks at 44 % attaching efficiency with 1 blocks and 1 ace. Italy will face Germany in the next match Ostrava.

Germany beat Bulgaria in four. Germany looks to be very pump in the game against Bulgaria, especially with Grozer and Moritz Karlitzek hammering the ball to their opponent's court. Grozer scored 17 points with 12 attack at 38% efficiency with 2 blocks and 3 ace and Karlitzek scored 19 points with 11 attacks at 52.6 % efficiency with 2 blocks and 6 aces! None of the Bulgarian players were able to score above double digit. Bulgaria also double the about of attacking errors and block in totals, 7 blocked and 7 attacking errors verse 4 blocked and 3 errors from Germany.

Turkey failed to surprise Serbia after a great showing during the preliminary rounds where they won against Russia. Serbia showed signs of instability and inconsistency through out the game. Their maturity and experienced played a role in the game to pull it through Turkey. The best scorer is Adis Laguymdzija, he scored 20 points with 17 attack with 22.0% attacking efficiency and 3 ace. Turkey managed to out block, out served and out spiked  Serbia, but Turkey's inexperience, making errors at the wrong time of the set cause them the game. This is a very important step for Turkey to grow, certainly with one of the best European leagues with great resource help Turkey to blossom and becomes the raising star of this Olympics cycle's European team.

Netherland played a tight game against Portugal, but Netherlands were able to pull away and win in 5.  Nimir Abdel-Aziz is the best scorer of the match scored 32 points, with 32 attacks at 41.4 % attacking efficiency, with 2 blocks and 3 ace. Nimir hit a total of 58 sets out of 128, 45.3 percent of the set went to Nimir.  The teams were matched evenly across the match with similar numbers of block, service ace and attack efficiency. The reason why Netherlands won the game is that they substituted their starting setter Wessel Keemink to Freek De Weijer. During the second set, Keemink was substituted out for De Weijer, De Weijer stabilized the team by accurately setting towards the spikers. Portugal was not able to continue on with their success in the fourth set and opened up a 3 point lead to Netherlands and ultimately was not able to chase the Netherlands.

Coming up next will be Slovenia verse Croatia and France verse Czech Republic to wrap up the Round of 16. The first match of the quarterfinals will begin in the 14 of September for the Gdansk pool and 15 of September for the Ostrava pool. The winners of the quarterfinals will all travel to Katowice for the final four match.

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