THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Women’s Volleyball : A Bored Cuba Team Takes Time to Top U.S.

The U.S. women lost in the Pan American Games volleyball semifinals Thursday night, but at least it took them a long time to do it.

That was one of the few compliments Coach Terry Liskevych could give his team after undefeated Cuba’s 15-9, 15-11, 15-6 victory.

“To take Cuba to an hour and 25 minutes is pretty good,” Liskevych said of the match that actually lasted one hour, 29 minutes and 26 seconds.

All that accomplished, however, was to delay the inevitable as 5-0 Cuba, one of the world’s best teams, advanced to Saturday afternoon’s finals against 4-1 Peru, a 15-9, 15-10, 15-11 winner over Brazil Thursday. Cuba is favored to win its fifth consecutive Pan American Games championship.

The United States (1-4) and Brazil (2-3) play for the bronze medal prior to the championship game.

Perhaps the Cubans will be forced to break a sweat against Peru, something they didn’t do against the United States.

The Cubans as much as admitted afterward they were bored as they won their 25th straight match against the United States, which is still making the transition from the silver-medal team it had in the 1984 Summer Olympics. While the U.S. women celebrated every point they scored, the Cubans hardly smiled even when the game ended.

“We played rather passively,” said Antonio Perdomo, one of the Cuban coaches. “That’s not really the rhythm of our team.

“Our girls play with too much security. They know they can win so, at the beginning, we don’t start out holding back. As the games get going, we begin to play up to our potential.”

That was the case in the second game Thursday night, when the United States took a 7-2 lead. But then the Cubans got serious and scored 10 straight points.

Liskevych said the United States women didn’t have enough confidence to believe they could continue to play as well against the Cubans as they did early in that game. The United States has lost four straight matches after beating Canada in the opener of the round-robin competition.

“The second game was ours, but our girls started making a lot of errors,” he said. “When your confidence gets jolted like ours has here, it’s tough to respond against a team like Cuba with a real calm, controlled effort.”

The United States no doubt would have performed better with Keba Phipps, the 18-year-old middle blocker from Lakewood, Calif., who returned to the training center in San Diego Wednesday because of recurring stomach pains. She is still recovering from surgery in early June for removal of cysts on her kidneys.

Perdomo identified the 6-3 Phipps as the woman who can lead the United States back into international prominence.

“She has the height and the age,” he said. “She hits the ball very high, gets her hands up above the net. All she needs is to build her strength and a lot of experience.”

Perdomo said he also was impressed with middle blockers Caren Kemner, 22, from the University of Arizona and Kim Oden, 23, from Stanford.

“Each day, all the time, they are playing better and better,” he said. “In comparison to the last two years, they are getting closer to us.

“They have more potential than what they’ve shown in the Pan American Games. They had better games against us before the Pan American Games.”

But Perdomo said the Cubans also will improve between now and the Olympics because of their youth. He referred specifically to 19-year-old attacker Mireya Luis, who played in the 1983 Pan American Games at 15, and 17-year-old attacker Magaly Carvajal, who recently won a starting position.

“We’ve got 14 months before the Olympics,” Liskevych said. “We need to improve 30% to 40% to stay with the good teams like Cuba, China and the Soviet Union. By then, we’ll have 60 or 70 more matches. You can’t teach that experience.”

Perhaps by then the Cubans will have to sweat a game with the United States.

“They can be as unemotional as they want,” Kemner said. “But the day we beat them, they’re going to have to change their attitude a little bit.”