After the 0-3 defeat in the Canary Islands, the Lions entered the rematch with courage. They thrived on serve, while the visitors broke seven serves in the opening set. A fighting team performance, supported especially by sweeper Daniel Čech, brought the lead.
Cuban sweeper Luis Estrada was on a rampage in the second set. He converted practically all the passes into points, and it was mainly thanks to him that the Lions built up a five-point lead. They lost it when Las Palmas equalized at 6:18 p.m. on a service by Italian striker Paolo Zonca.
But the end was again to the joy of the packed UNYP Arena for the home team led by the sweepers Čech and Estrada. The latter was the most productive player in Prague with 23 points.
In the third set came the Czech champion’s first game break. They broke a lot of serves and the attack disappeared, although the all-rounder Casey Schouten gradually came into play. Las Palmas led the whole set, the home team only reduced the difference to three points at the end.
The Czech champions had to win the fourth set to stay in the game for promotion. They entered it excellently, when Schouten contributed to a 5:1 lead with a serve. Although the guests came close several times, the Lions confirmed the three-point win and forced the deciding set.
From the start, however, visiting scorer Nicolas Bruno took control of the game, who was unstoppable in the beginning and scored several of his total 21 points.
“Hats off to what Bruno is showing. With his parameters, what he has, he is an incredible smasher,” acknowledged captain Jakub Janouch. The Argentinian Bruno is 188 centimeters tall, which is below average for today’s top sweepers.
The sides changed in the golden set at a score of 3:8 from the home team’s point of view. The dangerous Zonca gave them hope with a misstep on the serve in the end, but it vanished after the broken serves of Schouten and blocker Fynnian McCarthy.
“The golden set is like that, it’s ten minutes away. And they were better than us in those minutes,” Lions coach Juan Manuel Barrial said.
He appreciated his wards. “I think we played an amazing game, I’m really proud of the boys. They fought like lions. We played an amazing Champions League,” he said.
The Lions advanced to the knockout stages in the LM as the first Czech men’s club since the introduction of the current format. Before that, Ostrava played in the play-offs in 2007.
The players of Las Palmas, who eliminated Jihostroj České Budějovice in the basic group, will face the Turkish club Ziraat Bank Ankara in the quarter-finals after progressing through the Czech champion.
2024-02-07 21:11:25
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