USA opened their 2015 World League with a 3-1 (25-19, 25-22, 23-25, 25-23) win against Iran in Pool B
Los Angeles, USA, May 30, 2015 – The 2014 FIVB World League champions USA started their 2015 campaign in style, beating Iran 3-1 (25-19, 25-22, 23-25, 25-23) in their Pool B opener.
USA Captain Paul Lotman: “I think it was a great start to the tournament for us. We started the match off very strong. Our serving worked well for us. In the third set, Iran started to play better and played better defence to put us in difficult situations and made it an exciting match. We expect the same atmosphere tomorrow and I am sure they will play better.”
USA Coach John Speraw: “I was pleased with the performance of Aaron Russell who was in his first (World League) start for us. We do have some very nice young players in the program who can contribute in many ways and he had a great match tonight. It was a battle between two different styles of service. When they were float serving and hitting their spots very well it caused us all kinds of problems. When we were hitting our jump serve well it caused them problems.”
Iran Captain Mir Saeid Marouflakrani: “First of all I want to say congratulations to the USA team. We started very badly in this tournament. I think we can play much better than we did today. We had a lot of mistakes. We started to come back in the match in the third set … the USA team has better players and more experience.”
Iran Coach Slobodan Kovac: “Congratulations to the USA team because they surprised us. I don’t know why they didn’t play (Murphy) Troy and they played (Aaron) Russell and he played very well. In the first two sets we didn’t know him because he haven't played against him before. This is a new player and he did his job very well. We will try tomorrow to be better but it’s not easy because this is one of the best teams in the world.”