USA Cup Volleyball Tournament : U.S. Team Wins Again, but French Make a Match of It

A match broke out at the Stubbies USA Cup Saturday night, which was nice for a change. Nothing wrong with routs, but they can get stale after a while.

This time, the U.S. national men’s volleyball team, which swept its first two outings of the four-team round-robin tournament after needing only three games to win 10 of its previous 13 matches, worked overtime, at least by recent standards.

The outcome, however, was no different as the Americans, rated No. 1 in the world, defeated France, 15-7, 16-14, 5-15, 15-5, before a crowd of 3,841 at the Forum to win for the 27th time in the last 29 matches.

Tonight, the United States will seek its fifth USA Cup title in as many years in a 7 p.m. rematch with the Soviet Union, a 15-10, 15-12, 15-3 winner over Japan in Saturday’s other match.

The French and Japanese will play for third place at 5 p.m.

Saturday, the fourth-ranked French were good, just not good enough.

“To beat the best team in the world,” French Coach Eric Daniel said, “you have to play perfect.”

Or at least as the French did in the third game. After twice being at game-point in the second game, only to lose in an exciting ending, they controlled play to pull back into the match.

But the United States responded in the fourth game by jumping out to a 10-2 lead and winning handily.

“The performance of our players was not up to par,” Daniel said. “The team we were up against definitely did nothing new. The Americans really know how to exploit our weaknesses.”

Five Americans finished in double figures in kills, led by Bob Ctvrtlik’s match-high 26. Steve Timmons had 17, Doug Partie 16, Craig Buck 15 and Karch Kiraly 13. Eric Bouvier and Christophe Meneau both had 24 kills for France.

“I noticed our team was real quiet going into the match, which is unusual,” U.S. Coach Marv Dunphy said. “Both teams should play better when they play again. . . . Actually, both teams gave up points in bunches.

“The quiet hero, Craig Buck, did a real nice job. He goes unnoticed.”