Tehran, Iran, August 17, 2022 – Promising Shunta Ono weighed in with 29 points as defending champions Japan played a see-saw battle against Thailand to edge past the Southeast Asian counterparts in exhausting 98-minute five sets in the 14th Asian Men’s U18 Volleyball Championship at the Federation Hall on Wednesday.
A clean sweep of three wins in Pool B including the dramatic 25-15, 22-25, 25-17, 23-25, 15-9 triumph over Thailand has guaranteed Japan the top spot in the pool, while the winless Thais also ended their campaign in the pool round-robin preliminaries to finish fourth in the pool.
Playing ten sets in the previous two matches of the pool plays, Japan came up with determination to win their final preliminary match. Japan and Thailand, which needed to break their jinx after losing two on the trot, were locked horns in a tight contest. The Japanese proved their class above Thailand to capture the tiebreak win.
As Shunta Ono scored a match-high 29 points including 28 attacks for Japan, and teammate Hiroki Bito kept him good company to add 26 points. Chaloemdet Bunrot contributed 19 points for Thailand.
“We played all matches in tiebreaker and my players were very tired. We tried to give our best performance. We will have two days of rest and prepare ourselves for the upcoming matches,” Hiroshi Honda, head coach of Japan, commented.
After the match, Japan improved their performance with 6 points from three straight wins to top Pool B, while Thailand secured fourth place in the pool.
Both teams ended their campaigns in the preliminaries and will have two rest days (Thursday and Friday). Their matches will resume on Saturday in the cross quarterfinals.
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