China, Cuba unbeaten at Beilun Cup women's volleyball tourn

The Chinese women's volleyball team delighted home spectators on Thursday with a resounding¹ 3-0 win over the Dominican Republic at the Beilun Cup four-nation invitational.

A boisterous² crowd of approximately 3,000 did its best to encourage China to the 25-15, 25-20 and 25-16 victory in just 64 minutes.

In the day's other game, an inconsistent Cuba staved off the Netherlands' late rally to prevail in a five-set thriller³.

China will meet Cuba Friday night to decide the winner of the tournament.

Chinese head coach Chen Zhonghe made a change to his starting line-up, replacing Zhou Suhong with veteran spiker Zhang Yuehong. Zhang paid Chen's faith in her as the 32-year-old smashed five kills to lead China's smooth attacking in the first set.

The Dominicans could find no answers to China's speedy attacks and strong blocking in Set Two. After building up an advantage of 7-4, China kept a distance of at least four points and finally took it 25-20.

With Zhang and Xu Yunli firing effectively from both flanks, China looked a class of their own in the third set and led throughout to seal the victory.

Zhang top-scored for China, dishing out 14 kills in her 15-point haul. Xu had 10 points, from eight spikes⁴, one block and one serve ace⁵.

"This was a perfect win, but the big margin⁶ doesn't necessarily mean that we are in a class above the Dominican Republic," said Zhou Suhong, China's captain.

Chen, who has been experimenting young players in recent matches, said that the young generation has a lot of work to do should they defend the Olympic title on home soil in 2008.

"We are still a technically⁷ raw team. If we don't make progress in techniques, such as digging, we would not achieve good results at next year's Olympic Games," he said.

Cosiris Argendi Rodriguez paced the Dominicans with 11 points, all of them from spikes.

The duel⁸ between Cuba and the Netherlands was full of drama. Cuba controlled the early stage of the match, and won the first two sets 25-12, 25-22. But the Cubans looked like a different side in the following two sets, with their power-packed attacking totally ineffective, allowing the Dutch team to pull back by 25-22 and 29-27.

As the score was tied at 13-all in the fifth-set tiebreak, Cuba won two points in a row to finish off its European rival.

Cuba's head coach Calderon Felipe paid tributes to the Dutch team.

"Although we won the match, it was the Dutch team who should have come out as the winner. I think, both of the two teams are at the same level," said Felipe.

Visser Sanna had a team-high 19 points for the Netherlands, while Yanelis Santos Allengne was the leading scorer for Cuba with 18 points.