USA’s title defense at full pace with quarterfinal sweep of Poland

The United States are one step closer to succeeding in their defense of the Olympic title won three years ago in Tokyo as they advanced to the semifinals of the Paris 2024 Games on Tuesday with a straight-set victory over Poland and will compete in the medal rounds.

After benefiting from strong starts in the first two sets, the defending champions had to make a comeback in the third to produce a 3-0 (25-22, 25-14, 25-20) win at the South Paris Arena 1.

The Americans will now face Brazil, who earlier on Tuesday handled the Dominican Republic in three sets, in the semifinals, on Thursday, at 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT). The other matchup will have Türkiye, who eliminated China, and the winners of the fourth quarterfinal, reuniting Italy and Serbia, at 20:00 local time (18:00 GMT).

Paris 2024 – Match Schedule and Results

Americans and Brazilians have played each other in three of the last four Olympic gold medal matches, with the USA prevailing in the most recent one, in Tokyo, and the South Americans taking back-to-back titles in Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

"What a great match this is going to be," opposite Annie Drews said. "They're a great program and have been playing beautiful volleyball. I am proud of what we're building and I know we're going to bring our best to that fight. Pool A was such a dogfight and it showed us anything can happen here. It helped us prepare to stay ready for anything. I feel that as the tournament kept going on, we just got better and better at not being too rattled."

The USA also made it to the semifinals at the Rio 2016 Games, where they won bronze, which makes of this their fourth straight and eighth overall Olympic semifinal appearance.

The victory also earned the Americans 13.63 points in the FIVB World Ranking, which were enough to make them climb two spots, going from sixth to fourth with their new total of 361.09. On their way up, the USA overtook Poland, who exchanged places with them, now having 349.75, and China, who are fifth with 350.30.

Drews led the way in the American victory, tallying 13 points (12 kills, one block). With 12 points apiece, outside hitters Avery Skinner and Kathryn Plummer had productive performances against the Polish as well.

"We came here with really high hopes and expectations and we're exceeding those, so I'm just really happy with everything," Skinner commented. "We fought really hard in every match. Today we were behind in the third set and it's hard to come back from a deficit, especially against such a good team like Poland. We just wanted to side out quickly and go in runs with the serve and I think we did that and that's how we came back at the end."

Poland had outside hitter Martyna Łukasic, with 12 points (nine kills, three blocks), and middle blocker Agnieszka Korneluk, with 11 (five kills, four blocks, one ace), as their leading scorers in the quarterfinals.

"It was the first Olympics for our entire squad, so maybe we had way too many emotions on our side," Korneluk said. "I think that because of that we couldn't play at our best and they played very, very well and we couldn't stop them. This were my first and might have been my last Olympics too, but I hope this team will continue to grow and get to play in Los Angeles in four years."

The Americans had a wide margin over the Polish in kills (44 to 30) and doubled their production in aces, with six to three, besides having benefited from 15 points in errors and only given away ten. The Europeans had the edge in blocks, with 12 to ten.

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