U.S. lets it get away against Russia in men’s volleyball

LONDON -- For two victorious sets and up until a failed match point, the U.S. men’s volleyball team had put its best foot forward against Russia on Saturday afternoon at Earls Court.

Then, momentum crashed down as the U.S. blockers kept looking up at 6-foot-8 Maxim Mikhaylov, 6-11 Alexander Volkov and 7-2 Dmitriy Muserskiy. And when David Lee’s final block try sailed wide, the U.S. suffered a five-set loss in pool play to the world’s second-ranked team.

Even after victories, Reid Priddy has talked about the need for a “dump and flush” mentality at the Olympics. The defending gold medalists, who have defeated Russia only once since 2008, will need to do just that after falling, 29-27, 25-19, 24-26, 16-25, 8-15.

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“It’s not what we wanted, but if we’re the team we pride ourselves on being, we’ll respond well to this,” Coach Alan Knipe said.

After Volkov’s spike foiled the Americans’ only match point and Russia rattled off two more quick points to close the third set, Knipe employed various tactics to try to slow the collapse. He replaced Priddy with Sean Rooney, who won gold in Beijing but has rarely played here.

With the U.S. trailing, 12-5, in the fourth set, Rooney made two consecutive kill blocks and had four spikes to try to power a comeback. But Mikhaylov, who finished with 23 spikes, and Sergey Tetyukhin, who had 17, kept powering through the U.S. blocking.

“It’s great to get in and my job is to try to spark the team,” Rooney said. “But it’d be a good sign if I never played again because we’d be rolling through the tournament.”

The U.S. took advantage of Russia’s nine service errors to win the first set. But after passing and serving well in the second set, the Americans struggled with blocking and with receiving serve.

“It’s something you can never do against Russia and that’s relax,” Rooney said.

The U.S. picked up a point and still leads Pool B over Russia and top-ranked Brazil with 10 points. It closes pool play Monday night against winless Tunisia.

In other matches Saturday, in the U.S. group, Germany beat Tunisia, 3-0. In other groups, Poland beat Britain, 3-0; Italy beat Australia, 3-2, and Argentina beat Bulgaria, 3-1.

kcjohnson@tribune.com

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