Going into the Gold Medal match between China and Serbia, it has been an exciting 2 weeks of volleyball and we’ll get into some of the details to watch for in the match.
The expected starting lineups for China and Serbia are as follows:
For China, their offense flows through Zhu Ting. She’s gotten 34% of the sets and is hitting .429. Zhang gets 16% of the set, but basically half as efficient as Ting at .217. China’s best middle attacker is Yuan at .459 but only gets about 8% of the sets. If Serbia can slow Ting, China’s going to have difficulties.
Looking at Serbia, they’ve put 54% of the offense through Mihajlovic and Boskovic. Rasic is their favorite target in the middle. Boskovic is hitting at a similar level to Zhang at .218, but Mihajlovic is at .329. Rasic a little better than her at .337.
I will give the advantage here to China
Onto blocking. China’s Xiangyu Gong is tied for their best blocker at 0.64 blocks per set. Ting is 3rd at 0.57. For Serbia, their middles Stevanovic and Rasic are both higher at 0.68 and 0.96 respectively.
Advantage to Serbia
Next the service line. With the matches being so close, service errors can cost a team the match.
China has three players at around 0.20 aces per set, Ting, Zhang and Gong. Serbia’s Rasic is the leading player for them with more aces than service errors and serves 0.61 aces per set. Boskovic is next highest at 0.43 aces per set. Stevanoic and Ognjenovic are still above the Chinese players.
Advantage to Serbia
Onto defense, Serbia’s libero Popovic is digging (including dig receptions) almost 4 balls a set. Malesevic and Mihajlovic combined dig 5.4 balls between them too. For China, their libero Li Lin is a little worse than Popovic at 3.6 digs a set. Ting and Gong are also a little worse at 5.2 digs per set.
Advantage to Serbia
Lastly serve reception. China has been better at their passing by 2.7% than Serbia. Ting has been the target on 24% of China’s receptions and Lin, the libero, 26%. For Serbia, Malesevic appears to be most targeted serve receive player in history (joking). She has been the target for 55% of the Serbia’s reception. However, Malesevic’s excellents is at 32%. I have a feeling she’ll be targeted again by China in the match.
Advantage to China
With score of 3-2 in the above categories, and a similar score in the match, Serbia is my expected Gold Medal winner in Rio.
Note: Jeremy uses 48 points for sets (24+24 or 25-23) and 28 (14-14 or 15-13) for the fifth for his calculations, so his per set numbers may be slightly different than the FIVB’s numbers which only use whole numbers of sets
FIVB IMAGES