Men's volleyball suffers another easy loss

For an underdog team like China's men's volleyball, which has already a futile record of six at one cup tournament, one more defeat is nothing but a result of inertia.

The Chinese men were whitewashed by their Japanese counterparts 0-3 (23-25, 20-25, 24-26) after squandering a set point at 24-23 in game three but ending up with three consecutive unforced errors to hand the victory to their Asian neighbor at the men's volleyball world up on Monday.

A see-saw-foreseen game turned out to be a lopsided one as a result of unexpected errors committed by China at crucial points. A failed adjustment of a poor pass and a spike-out of China snapped game one after a 23-tie; three errors in run including a service one made China the chaser ever since 6-6 level in game two.

Japan, on the same level as China, is tipped to take the advantage at the Olympic qualifying World Cup tournament. China got only one point from previous six games - 0-3 loss to US, Russia, Egypt and Italy, 1-3 to Poland and 2-3 Brazil.

"We completely lost to ourselves," said Chinese spiker Zhang Chen, whose errant straight spike helped converse Japan's match point at 24-25 in Game Three.

China committed 26 errors in the whole match compared with Japan's 11; ironically, the Chinese had one more winner than Japan of 47-46.

Zhou Jian'an, head coach of the Chinese team owed the loss to a "young team". "Chen Ping was not on the court and our players are too young," he said. Second setter Chen is the core player of the team but was injured out after the game against Poland on Sunday.

Compared with their female compatriots, who is always among the world top teams and has won the London Olympic booth after finishing third at the world cup, the Chinese men's team has to fight with their Asian foes for a possible Olympic spot.

According to the Olympic qualifying rule, in addition to the top three finishers of the world cup, the champion team of the continent's qualifying tournament will also get into the Olympics.