Japanese among early individual standouts

Japan’s 3-1 victory over the Netherlands on the second day of the Volleyball Nations League 2022 generated some of the best individual performances in the first eight matches of the tournament with players from the Asian team leading five of the seven statistical categories so far.

· Watch all VNL 2022 matches live on Volleyball TV.

The first two days of the VNL featured eight matches (four in Ottawa, Canada, and another four in Brasilia, Brazil), meaning all 16 teams that are part of the event this year have been on the court once.

Japan’s Yuji Nishida had arguably the best individual performance of the VNL so far as the 22-year-old opposite helped his team come from behind to defeat the Dutch 3-1 with 25 points. Nishida registered five points more than Iranian outside hitter Morteza Sharifi and six more than Serbian outside hitter Miran Kujundzic.

Nishida also tallied more kills than any other player in their opening matches, leaving the court in Brasilia with 23. Dutch opposite and captain Nimir Abdel-Aziz, who faced Nishida and his Japanese teammates, produced 17 kills while Canadian outside hitter Stephen Maar had 16 in his team’s three-set loss to Germany.

Meanwhile, Japanese captain Yuki Ishikawa was one of four players to block their opponents five times in their VNL debuts. He was the only outside hitter to do so, however, with the other three being middle blockers (David Smith of USA, Svetoslav Gotsev of Bulgaria and Barthelemy Chinenyeze of France).

The Asians also had the player with the most digs, libero Tomohiro Yamamoto, who claimed 12. His French counterpart Benjamin Diez registered 11 while Brazilian captain and setter Bruno Rezende and young Italian libero Alessandro Piccinelli avoided ten opponent points.

Tokyo Olympian Masahiro Sekita ranked first among the setters with 35 successful actions in the position. He ranked higher than Bruno, who had 31, and Iran’s Taher Vadi Mohammed, who registered 29.

A key player in Serbia’s 3-1 victory over Bulgaria, Kujundzic had the most aces with six, followed by two Iranian players, Sharifi and opposite Saber Kazemi, who helped their team top China with four points each directly from the service line.

Targeted by most of the Serbian serves in their match, Bulgarian outside hitter Aleksandar Nikolov had 14 successful receptions, the most in the tournament so far. Polish outside hitter Bartosz Kwolek had 12 in his team’s 3-0 victory over Argentina with Japanese libero Yamamoto adding another ten.

VNL Statistics

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