Argentina finishes seventh at Pan Am Cup

GATINEAU, Canada, June 18, 2011 - Ivan Castellani scored 17 points to lead Argentina to a 25-21, 25-21, 22-25, 25-15 victory over the Dominican Republic on Saturday to finish seventh at the Pan Am Cup men’s volleyball tournament.

It was a very valuable experience for the Argentineans, who were fielding their national junior team that will compete at the world junior championships later this summer in Brazil. 

Martin Ramos added 15 points for the victors Luis Pedro Garcia was the top scorer for the Dominican with 18 points while Eduardo Concepcion added 15

‘’It was very important in our preparation for the world juniors,’’ said Argentina’s head coach Juan Manuel Cichello.  ‘’We know what the good and the bad is that we need to work on.  We showed a lot of improvement on reception and serves in particular.’’

‘’Our goal here was to reach the semifinals,’’ added Argentina’s Damian Villalba.  ‘’It’s not the result we wanted but we had some good moments.  Now we hope we can improve even more.’’

‘’We made too many mistakes in our transition game,’’ said Garcia.  ‘’Argentina played well on the attack and were very hard to stop. We played pretty well considering this is a new team but we hoped to be better than eighth.