In Saturday’s first semifinal, Tianjin Bohai Bank put on a solid blocking effort that made the big difference towards their 3-1 (25-23, 25-21, 24-26, 25-22) victory over Brazil’s Dentil Praia Clube Uberlandia, that and their captain Li Yingying’s fantastic performance.
In front of nearly three thousand fans on the stands, the Chinese star outside hitter spearheaded her team with an amazing match high of 32 points, including the match winner that came with a successful back-row hit. Li spiked at a 51% success rate and raised two of Tianjin’s 20 kill blocks in the match. An impressive eight stuffs were authored by Russian middle blocker Irina Fetisova, who finished with a total of 17 points. Outside Wang Yizhu and opposite Chen Boya added another 16 and 10 points, respectively. American opposite Nia Reed was Dentil Praia’s most prolific player with 23 points. Middle blocker and captain Adenizia Da Silva and Russian outside Sofya Kuznetsova added 12 points each, while the other outside, Monique Marinho Pavao, fired four of the team’s six aces to finish with 11 points.
With 20 kill blocks against 11, that was, in fact, the only scoring element in which Tianjin outdid Dentil Praia. The two teams were level on spike kills (63 each) and on unforced errors (12 each), while the Brazilian side outserved the winners by 6-4 in aces.
Tianjin are participating in a Club World Championship for the fourth time. They will be the first Chinese team ever to play in the final. Their previous best result was the bronze they claimed last year by beating Dentil Praia in the third place match. The Brazilian team will play in the bronze medal match for the second straight time, hoping to improve on last year’s fourth place, which was their best result in the history of the competition.
