THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Volleyball : U.S. Team’s Rallies Help End Cuba Win Streak

The U.S. volleyball team was out to win a match with Cuba Wednesday night, not an award for inter-hemispheric diplomacy.

They succeeded magnificently.

The United States defeated previously unbeaten Cuba, 15-10, 10-15, 15-10, 15-6, to finish round-robin play at 4-1 and clinch the top-seeded position for the medal round. The U.S. team will play fourth-seeded Argentina (3-2) Friday after Cuba (4-1) meets Brazil (3-2). The bronze- and gold-medal games will be held Sunday.

It was a match in which the Cubans took early leads in all but the last game, only to falter and lose their fourth match in seven meetings with the United States this year.

This match, like several of the earlier ones, was marked by demonstrative play and vocal reaction on the part of both teams. It is what has helped to make this rivalry not the friendliest on the U.S. schedule.

“We get along great with the Soviets, but we don’t have much to do with Cubans,” said Karch Kiraly, the U.S. team captain. “For us it’s better to think of our opponents as idiots. It’s easier to play hard against someone you don’t like than it is to play against a friend.”

Apparently, the U.S. players have little trouble categorizing the Cubans.

Particularly singled out among the Cubans was Joel Despaigne. The U.S. players don’t appreciate Despaigne’s habit of yelling and taunting them under the net. Kiraly responded several times with yulps of his own, all of which seem to help excite the loudly pro-U.S. crowd at Hinkle Fieldhouse on the Butler University campus.

The crowd of 5,205 was enthusiastic, but well behaved, cheering on the home team, occasionally booing calls that went against them, chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, and waving U.S. flags on the big points.

“Playing before an enthusiastic crowd is great,” said Kiraly, of Santa Barbara, a former All-American at UCLA. “It really gets you going.”

The crowd was a welcomed addition for the U. S. team that played its previous six games against the Cubans in Havana. The last of those was a 3-2 loss in the finals of an Olympic qualifying zone championships.

“Fidel Castro (the Cuban president) was there and their players were doing a lot of finger-jabbing and talking under the net,” said Steve Timmons, who led the U.S. team with 29 kills.

Timmons said the bad feelings between the teams go back several years. He said their relationship is quite different from the one the U.S. team enjoys with the Soviet Union. The U.S. team dethroned the Soviets as World Champions last year.

“I know they didn’t like that, but there’s a mutual respect between the teams,” said Timmons, of Newport Beach and a former All-American at USC. “We know they’ve been the best in the world for 10 years; and they know how hard we worked to beat them. There’s none of that with the Cubans.”

Timmons initially was careful not to categorize the relationship so bitterly, but with only the barest of prompting offered: “I don’t want to give them anything to put up on their bulletin board. Then again, they probably couldn’t read it.”

The Cubans never seemed to get their game going Wednesday. They led, 7-2, in the first game only to drop five consecutive points and 13 of the last 16 in losing, 15-10. Cuba won the second game, 15-10, coming from a 7-6 deficit to take nine of the last 12 points. But in the third game, the United States ran off seven consecutive points after trailing, 6-4, in taking the game, 15-10. The concluding game was the easiest as Timmons served the first four points and the Cubans never recovered. The United States scored the last five points in winning, 15-6, and sending Cuba into the medal round as the second-seeded team.

But Kiraly was not particularly impressed with his team’s performance.

“It was a chess match out there,” he said. “Neither team wanted to play any harder than it needed to win. The Latin teams have this idea that they can’t beat a good team in the same tournament twice. I think the Cubans were thinking that way. We don’t mind it because we know we can beat anyone. We don’t mind playing them twice.”

That wish could come Saturday when Kiraly said he hopes the United States will meet Cuba for the gold medal. A U.S. victory would mean its first men’s volleyball gold medal in the Pan American Games since 1967.

“We’d like nothing better than to play them again for the gold,” Kiraly said. “We didn’t like losing to them in Havana. We don’t like losing to anyone. And one thing about the Cubans, we never have trouble getting up to play.