Flying Dutchmen spearhead Modena win

Leo Shoes PerkinElmer Modena caught up with all their postponed Italian men’s league matches as they mastered a four-set home victory over Consar RCM Ravenna in an 18th-leg fixture on Wednesday. Spearheaded by a duo of Dutch strikers, opposite Nimir Abdel-Aziz and outside hitter Maarten van Garderen, they added another three points to their SuperLega Credem Banca tally to get closer to the leaders.

While some of Modena’s big stars like Earvin Ngapeth, Yoandy Leal and Dragan Stankovic were given some rest during the match, Abdel-Aziz once again led in scoring and earned the MVP nomination. He hammered out 18 kills at a 55% success rate in attack and added two aces and two stuff blocks towards the match high of 22 points in his team’s 3-1 (25-16, 26-24, 19-25, 25-17) victory.

Inspired by the opportunity to shine on the court, Van Garderen contributed another 18 points to the win, including three blocks. Ngapeth’s younger brother, Swan, was the other starting outside in Modena’s line-up for all four of the sets, registering 58% success in attack to spike 11 points and adding an ace and a block towards a 13-point tally.

The winless underdogs from Ravenna once again showed their ability to win sets against the big opponents. It was their ninth 3-1 defeat of the season, the highest number among all SuperLega participants. Indeed they have lost all 23 of their matches and have been long doomed to relegation, but in almost half of the cases they were able to deny their opponents clean-slate victories. Bulgarian opposite Dimitar Dimitrov was Consar’s most prolific player in Modena on Wednesday. He produced 18 points, including two aces and three blocks.

With the three-point victory, Modena improved to a 17-5 win-loss record and 48 points in fourth place, getting to within three points of second-placed Cucine Lube Civitanova, who have a game in hand, and third-placed Itas Trentino Trento.

SuperLega action resumes on Thursday with seventh-placed Gas Sales Bluenergy Piacenza hosting eighth-placed Verona Volley, and continues during the weekend with Verona welcoming Lube on Saturday and another five fixtures on Sunday.

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• Get all the results, statistics, schedules and more on Volleyball World’s SuperLega 2021-2022 site.