Russia stun USA with remarkable comeback win

London, Great Britain, August 4, 2012 - Russia recovered from two sets down to beat United States 3-2 (27-29, 19-25, 26-24, 25-16, 15-8) in a match of Pool B of the Olympic Games men’s volleyball tournament that lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes at Earls Court on Saturday.

Russia improved to a win-loss record of 3-1 while snapping the Olympic defending champions USA’s three-game winning streak.

Maxim Mikhaylov and Sergey Tetyukhin collected 27 and 21 points respectively to lead the Russian offense while Alexander Volkov and Dmitry Ilinykh contributed 16 and 11. Matt Anderson’s 18 points led the Americans while Clayton Stanley, David Lee and Reid Priddy finished with 14, 12 and 11 points respectively.

The winners held a slight advantage of 16-15 in the blocks category and 8-6 in the service winners charts.

Bulgaria and USA eventually suffered their first loss in the men’s Olympic tournament on Saturday as they were edged by Argentina and Russia respectively.

Actually their stories differ quite significantly as Bulgaria did never really challenge Argentina while the USA missed out on an opportunity to finish in straight sets their clash with Russia. The players coached by Vladimir Alekno ultimately found back their best play and could flip the score around to claim a well-deserved 3-2 win.

As a result of Saturday’s matches, the next-to-last in the Pool play, three teams – Poland, Bulgaria, and Italy – are topping the charts of Pool A with 3 wins and 1 loss each, while the same record is shared by top favorite USA, Brazil and Russia in Pool B.