Ontiveros and Virgen advance unbeaten to last 24

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, May 8, 2014 - Teams from Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Italy, Latvia, host nation Mexico and the United States won their respective pools Thursday as the field has been reduced to 24 from the 32-team men’s main draw for Friday’s start of single-elimination rounds at the double-gender US$150,000 FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open, the third event on the 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar.

Each receiving a bye into the round of 16, the eight men’s pool winners who emerged from Thursday’s last of three pool play matches were: Mexico’s Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen, Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins, Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt, Eric Koreng/Finn Dittelbach, USA’s John Hyden/Tri Bourne, Italy’s Paolo Ingrosso/Matteo Ingrosso, Brazil’s Thiago Santos/Marcio Araujo and Australia’s Sam Boehm/Cole Durant.

With intense competition resulting in 15 three-set matches out of the 48 pool play matches, the six teams who won their respective pools with unblemished 3-0 records were: Ontiveros/Virgen, Samoilovs/J. Smedins, M. Grimalt/ E. Grimalt, Hyden/Bourne, P. Ingrosso/M. Ingrosso and  Thiago/Marcio.

Australia’s Boehm/Durant and Germany’s Koreng/Dittelbach won their respective pools each with a 2-1 earned their respective byes via tiebreaker as Australia had a three-way tie in their pool and Germany had a two-way tie.

To the cheers of home country fans, Mexico’s top-seeded Ontiveros/ Virgen ended pool play with a 3-0 record Thursday by defeating 16th-seeded Sam Pedlow/Grant O’Gorman on the Playa Camarones stadium court in two sets, 21-13, 21-17 in 38 minutes. 

Very happy to win all three pool play matches in their home country, Ontiveros said after his team’s win on Thursday, “We were excited and nervous at the beginning today but we know how we play and we knew that we had the skills to win the match. We tried to do our best against the Canadians and I think the people saw it and they are proud of what we did in the match. By winning the pool, the most we will have to play tomorrow is twice and I hope we play both.”

Speaking more about Thursday’s match with Canada, Virgen commented, “The match was a difficult one because Canada has brought high level teams and this one isn’t the exception. I think we coordinated well so we could block and be in position the right way to get a good set so either of us could hit. They have a good game and they block very well.”