Philippines slips against Chinese Taipei, remains in hunt for seventh place

Missing the energy of the past days’ matches, the Philippines succumbed to Chinese Taipei, 19-25, 20-25, 19-25, in the classification stage of the 2017 AVC Senior Women’s Volleyball Championship at the Alonte Sports Arena in Laguna.

Chinese Taipei started the match with precision. Picking apart the Philippines’ defense and reception, the visitors emerged with a 19-11 first set lead and caused their foes to exhaust their timeouts early. The hosts tried to recover, managing spurts of two and three points. Indicative of the way set started, Chinese Taipei finished off their foes with service aces.

Sticking with their foes for most of the second set, the Philippines remained steady and eventually had a 20-19 lead. The Philippines’ offense, however, shut down down the stretch. After snuffing consecutive attack chances, the Nationals surrendered back-to-back errors to hand a 2-0 sets lead to Chinese Taipei.

The Philippines rallied to a promising start in the third set, grabbing a 10-4 lead after Chinese Taipei coughed up attack errors. The gap, however, quickly evaporated as the Nationals ran into another offensive rut. Chinese Taipei knotted the set at 10-all and again pushed their foes to exhaust their timeouts early. The visitors then slowly regained control of the match, building a 22-17 advantage and never looked back.

Coming off single-digit scoring outputs in their quarterfinals match against Thailand, Philippine stalwarts Alyssa Valdez and Jaja Santiago finished with 13 and 10 points, respectively.

“Lumabas talaga ‘yung experience ng Taipei and you could see talaga na they’ve been playing together for such a long time,” Valdez said. “We’re just really hoping na we gave them a good game because marami talaga kaming natutunan from just playing against them.”

Wu Wei-Hua led Taipei, who finished in the Top 4 two years agao, with 14 points. They face Vietnam for fifth tomorrow.

The Philippines will also end the tournament tomorrow, contending for seventh place against Kazakhstan, whom they lost to in straight sets earlier in the tournament.

The Scores

Chinese Taipei (3) – Wu 14, Chen W. 9, Hsiao 9, Tseng 6, Chen Y. 5, Chag 5, Chen T. 2, Lee 1, Lin 0, Yang (L)

Philippines (0) – Valdez 13, Santiago 10, Molina 8, Ortiz 7, Pontillas 7, Gonzaga 1, Dimaculangan 0, Fajardo 0, Maraño 0, Macandili (L)