USA blocked spirited Netherlands and secured their position in the second round
Verona, Italy, September 25, 2014 – USA said they were happy with the good volleyball played as they beat the Netherlands 3-0 at PalaOlimpia on Thursday.
USA captain Christa Harmott Dietzer: "The Netherlands came out very strong in the match, you know we put a premium on playing good volleyball. It's not about the spectacular play, we run our system, we run our speed and I think they struggled at times with some of our speed. We did a good job at distributing balls and when Courtney (Thomson) came in she did as well, so yes - a good win against a good team."
USA coach Karch Kiraly: "The Dutch team are deceptively strong. It's a team that's on the rise, they are a physical team and they are getting better. You're not going to crush anybody in this tournament. Especially from this point forward because the matches only get tougher. We would love to get three points out of these matches because of the scoring system. This is a match that I expect carries over with us to the next phase. They are points to carry and that's really important because we don't know who we'll play. The more points we have early, it helps us a little later on. These three points were important."
On whether he will change something in their training after having qualified:
"No, not at all, it's important that we get stronger since the match are only going to get tougher. We have an hour of training tomorrow morning and we play Thailand, then we're going to focus on the next match."
Netherlands captain Robin De Kruijf: “USA is one of the strongest teams in the world, and we already knew that this would be a hard match. We have to learn to keep the level high because as always we have started well but then got worse. It's a lesson for the next time.”
Netherlands coach Vermeulen Gido: “I'm a little bit disappointed because in the first set we played a very good volleyball, but then we lost concentration and we didn't manage to do our best. The main problem was that we made too many errors, most of them in reception.”