Birmingham saunter to quarter-finals
Saturday 4th December 2010
Members of the men's team wander through Whitechaple.
UBVC men claimed their first Super 8 scalp, beating London Lynx 1 relatively comfortably in the freezing cold Lynx venue. Birmingham continued to do enough to win against an experienced opposition who blocked well and gave even some of Birmingham’s players a lesson in arguing with the referee.
The first set saw Birmingham feel their way into the match after a good warm up. Fielding the starting six they hoped to see how they stood as a team having found themselves top of Division 1 in the first season there. Going into the technical time out down 8-4 Birmingham had to reflect on how they could deal with the big block Lynx were able to establish. Fortunately Kieron Bradley was on the ball and kicked off the first of his serving runs, winning 8 serves on the trot to take Birmingham to 15-9 up. Backed up ably by fellow BUCs serving maestro Carl Butcher, the end of the set would be a side-out game as Birmingham won 25-21.
The second set saw Birmingham briefly go to sleep as they went 4-0 down, unable to convert their hits. However Lynx let their opportunity slip and Bradley served back to 4-4. Birmingham’s confidence levels were up now they could sense they could win and increasingly opposite Krizko started to win points and Tomczak and Nikolov found a way past the blockers and forced Lynx to play more and more, much to their frustration. Accelerating away from the opposition Birmingham won the second 25-18 and looked good for a 3-0 win.
Things looked good until Birmingham struggled to get past the block again, putting pressure back on the passing unit. Whilst only a few points down Birmingham could still remain confident but then the Lynx captain managed to spend 5 minutes arguing about a referee call concerning the time it took to replace the Libero. Regardless of the merits of the decision in a hall where the changing room thermometer read a chilly 8 celius, this proved fatal to Birmingham and a turning point in the game as Birmingham went cold and Lynx turned their anger to aggression and focus on court, suddenly defending and swinging harder. Birmingham called a time-out 14-8 down and despite pulling back to a three point gap never got close to winning the set, losing 22-25.
The fourth set was nervy, the Lynx setter knocking the second ball over repeatedly and the pass never giving setter Carl Butcher many options. However Birmingham kept the game tight and were able to see out a well deserved 25-22 win. Yet again Birmingham provided spells of good volleyball and mixed it with some troughs, but did enough to beat a side used to playing at a higher level. To the delight of many of the players the quarter final opponents will be last year’s Cup and League winners Malory Eagles, a major test of the Birmingham team in the new year.
Match Facts
Competition: National KO Cup.
Played: Away.
Result: Won 3-1.
Set Scores: 22-25, 17-25, 25-22, 22-25.