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Serbia upset USA in five-set thriller at women's volleyball World Cup

Xinhua, August 23, 2015 Adjust font size:

Serbia upset reigning world champions United States in a five-set thriller Sunday evening for their first victory at the 2015 FIVB Women' s World Cup.

Recovering soon enough from Saturday' s 3-1 loss to China, the Serbian women outlasted the Americans 25-20, 22-25, 18-25, 25-19 and 15-6. Tijana Boskovic had 16 kills, three blocks and four aces to lead Serbia with 23 points with Brankica Mihajlovic adding 21. Karsta Lowe, Kelsey Robinson and Christa Harmotto Dietzen scored 11 points apiece for the United States.

"What can I say? It was an amazing game, both interesting and high quality," said Serbia coach Zoran Terzic. "We won and I must be very happy and satisfied. We played much better than the day before when we had ups and downs, but it was much better today and we stayed at the same level throughout the game. So I' m very, very happy and very satisfied with the victory."

Having lost to the United States in five sets in their most recent encounter in the 2015 World Grand Prix preliminary rounds, Serbia took a sweet revenge thanks to a 22-10 blocking advantage and improved their head-to-head record against the United States at the World Cup to 2-1.

"We played certain phases of our game well but I was particularly impressed with Serbia' s blocking and we didn' t make some very smart choices when they were putting up a block," said USA coach Karch Kiraly. "We lost and this is a long tournament. This is only the second match with nine more to go so we will focus our efforts on the next opponent tomorrow."

After slipping to a 1-1 win-loss record, the United States will take on China Monday evening in a rematch of last year' s World Championship final while Serbia will seek their second win at the 12-team tournament against Peru.

World runners-up China eased past African runners-up Algeria 3-0 here Sunday afternoon for their second straight victory at the 2015 FIVB Women's World Cup.

Following a hard-fought come-from-behind 3-1 win over Serbia Saturday afternoon, the Asian champions brushed aside Algeria 25-5, 25-11 and 25-8. The Algerian team has dropped two matches in a row.

As Jenny Lang Ping rested four of her regular starters, namely Zhu Ting, Zhang Changning and Yuan Xinyue and Lin Li, Zeng Chunlei emerged as the top scorer of the Chinese team with 12 points. Liu Yanhan contributed 11 with Zhang Xiaoya and Liu Xiaotong adding eight apiece.

"Today, we were trying to concentrate on our game and I used some players who are not always regular starting members, but I don' t regard them as back-up players," said Jenny Lang Ping at the press conference. Endi