China beats Cuba to win Beilun Cup volleyball invitational

China wrapped up its Beilun Cup four-nation women's volleyball tournament campaign on Friday with a five-set victory over Cuba.

China wrapped up its Beilun Cup four-nation women's volleyball tournament campaign with a five-set victory over Cuba on Friday, June 1, 2007.

The Chinese team, who went down in five set to Cuba last week in another international tournament also held in China, took sweet revenge on their arch rivals by prevailing¹ 25-18, 15-25, 18-25, 25-16, 15-11 in one hour 38 minutes.

China, who had earlier crushed the Dominican Republic and the Netherlands in straight sets, kept a perfect sheet. Cuba was the runner-up with a 2-1 win-loss record. The Dominican Republic (1-2) was third and the Netherlands (0-3) finished fourth.

Rolled on by sizzling spikes² from Sun Xiaoqing and Li Juan, a fired-up China dominated the first set, but the Cubans were unstoppable in the following two sets as their powerful serving held China at bay.

Head coach Chen Zhonghe made a change to the Chinese line-up at the start of the fourth set, replacing Sun with Yang Hao. The change turned out effective as China built up a fluid attacking rhythm which Brazil could not stem. On their second set point at 24-16, Zhou Suhong made no mistake with a kill to tie the score 2-2.

Teams traded points in the opening stages of the decider. When both sides were locked at 5-5, China won five points successively to surge ahead. Leading at 14-8, however, China could only clinch³ the winner on its fourth match point when Ramirez Echevarria Daimi' serve fell into the net.

Li Juan top socred for China with 16 points, from 13 spikes and three blocks. Captain Zhou Suhong added 12 points and Sun Xiaoqing had 7 points.

Cuba's leading scorer was Yumilka Ruiz Luaces, who smashed 17 kills in her 18-point haul.

After losing their first two games to Cuba and China, the Dominicans regained⁴ a bit of confidence with a 25-21, 20-25, 22-25, 25-17, 17-15 victory over the Netherlands in the day's other game.