Okayama, Japan, August 30, 2015 – USA defeated Kenya 3-0 (25-15, 25-16, 25-13) in the second round of the FIVB Women’s World Cup at Momotaro Arena in Okayama on Sunday.
USA coach Karch Kiraly: We don’t often get to play Kenya in World Cups and rarely in between. I want to congratulate them. I really love the spirit that they play the game with. They play a game where they obviously enjoy what they’re doing and they have a great fighting spirit.
On our side of the net, I thought our players were communicating well and planning well. Probably the biggest disappointment for us was our service game and we fell short in that skill.
We approach these tournaments with a plan to play all our players a lot and that helped us at the World Championships, so we can be rested and get great contributions from all the players. And that’s our plan for this tournament, too.
Our big goal is to be the best learners and improvers we can possibly be. We want to be better tomorrow than we were today and better next week than we were this week. If we can do that, we can do some special things. Today, we fell short in getting our serving better, but tomorrow is a new opportunity.
USA No. 14 Nicole Fawcett: I think we played well together as a team. Kenya played phenomenally against us. They had some great touches and played a great game and really worked us and forced us to figure out combinations on how to play them. We changed our game plan on blocking because they were hitting some good shots that we weren’t blocking in the beginning and we made a good adjustment on that. Kenya is a very aggressive and offensive team, and they have a strong mentality, and that’s important at international level.
Kenya coach David Lungaho: I think today’s match was good because my team played a very strong team. We have a lot of respect for USA and I have a lot of respect for the coach who I can admit is somebody I really wanted to see. When I was young, I really enjoyed the way he was playing. He’s my idol and I’m happy to be sitting next to him. As a team, we did our best, though our best was not good enough, but it’s something we can learn from. For us, the positives we take from this match are more important than the result. We will continue fighting. We know we are a developing team and we’re not going to lose hope.
Kenya captain Brackcides Khadambi: I want to congratulate USA on winning 3-0. For my team, we didn’t display a very good game, especially blocking and back defence, but sometimes we played really good. We’ll keep on fighting and will not lose hope. I know a win is near. Tomorrow (against China), our goal is to play well and improve out playing skills. We know China is strong, but we won’t give up. This is volleyball; the better you play, you will win, so tomorrow we will put in a big effort.