u/JSNDGaming

(Feel free to talk about your favorite players or standouts)!

Farrrrr and away was Hanes. What a fucking monster. His confidence is out of this world and I think we can coin him as Mario with all those one legged swings he had. HANES WITH THE YAHOO. He was absolutely phenomenal this year, leading scorer for team US! His offense is insane with his reach and his height. He’s so unafraid of the block, it’s actually crazy.

Feel free to debate, add, disagree etc… based off of time zones and simply time to watch, I can only go based off of the highlights that I watch.

Japan, kudos to them to achieving such a feat that any professional sports team could ever want to achieve with a 100% win record! Really a historic season with careers going into the history books of volleyball. However, as good as Japan is, every team in the last 3-4 years have fallen short:

2022: 5th
2023: 3rd
2024: 2nd
2025: 6th(I’ll admit that this was a weird year for a lot of big hitting countries)
2026:/Present: 4th

Japan is known for their high speed, high energy, and relentless desire to win the point and play defense like they have their backs to the wall. Their team is headlined by big names with Yuki Ishikawa, Ran Takahashi, Yuji Nishida, Tomohiro Yamamoto, Masahiro Sekita and Akihiro Yamauchi along with breakout names from the past couple of seasons. While not the biggest bunch, their explosive athleticism has made a huge impact and a large part of their success, besides their on court intellect, and skill. Japan have always started the vnl seasons hot right out the gate like a little ceasers hot and ready section, but as we all know as athletes, starting off hot and high energy will more often than not lead you to exhaustion and fatigue quicker. Especially since club seasons end around the same time the tournament starts. It also results in showing all your cards in the beginning, shows off your play style, team philosophy, and quirks leading to a lot of scouting and tape to watch for opponents. A notable player that they missed dearly was Onodera(hopefully he’s ok, best regards for him) and another being Sekita, but Fukaku almost made it like the never needed Sekita.

Another reason they fell short, once again, is the reluctancy to play their younger players. I was high on the Masato Kai stakes, and I still am. A 6’6 outside hitter for Japan would legit take them to the next level. If they were to play or simply start Kai with Otsuka/Tomita against weaker teams would mean a lot in terms of rest and recovery for their starters. I would’ve also loved to see Kento Miyaura in and starting for other games as well. The left handed cannon duo in nishida and Miyaura is a large part of Japans offense, especially the D attack and their serves. Back to my main point in this section, their younger players like Kai and Otsuka both had games that were huge impact for the future of their careers.

Japan needs a better mix of older and younger and that’s what I think caused the US to prevail over Japan in the semis. A mix of the veterans like Christanson, Mchenry, Champlain, Averill, Shoji, Defalco(unfortunate showings against Poland and Bulgaria), Hanes(fucking MVP for team US this season holy crap) allowed for much more development and leadership for those younger stars, especially for Mchenry and Briggs coming out of college just recently.

Japan has already exploded onto the scene as a redefining country for the culture of the sport. They just need to look into the cracks of light in their team(Kai most notably)

Side note: imagine Rui hachimura playing volleyball, I love him sm one of my favorite nba players

My FASFA was unable to cover my tuition and classes this semester. I need $4700 to pay off, but donations, even if only a dollar are massively appreciated. I have my Venmo set up, please help if willing or able to.

Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/Jason-Doan-29

My FASFA was unable to cover my tuition and classes. I need $4700 to cover the rest of the payments. One dollar helps, please, this is my last resort. If you have an offer, please DM, or if you can send to my Venmo, that’s the most ideal.

Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/Jason-Doan-29

I need help paying off the rest of my semester. My FASFA could not cover it all, and I need help paying off my tuition and classes. I need $4700. I desperately need it, please.

I have a PayPal and Venmo set up, for anyone willing or able to handout any sort of money even just a dollar would be massively appreciated.

I am currently starting a Amazon delivery gig where I can start making around $200 a week, granted not all of it will go towards paying off the loan, but I will do my absolute best to pay it off. I’ve never asked for such a big loan before, or at all and would please, let me have a favorable loan if possible. This would be such a massive help, I don’t know what else I can do.

As I stated earlier in the post:

Even just a dollar will be massively appreciated, I have a Venmo and PayPal set up so if you are able or willing to donate, dm and I’ll send my info

Edit: additional info

(Feel free to debate or criticize in comments but do not insult or belittle)

I don’t have time nor the ability to watch these games live as I live in NA so I’m can be unaware of certain issues on the court or could be missing details. I can only watch highlights and take away from there.

I have been a HUGE fan of Cuba, if you’ve looked at my post history, but Cuba this year, compared to what I’ve seen the previous years seem to have become stagnant and predictable. As always, they’re a very offensive oriented team and have shown to be able to compete with fast and strong teams like the U.S. and Japan. However, I can’t help but not see much progress. It is only week 2 so I’m not entirely sure if they still have players waiting to appear(I don’t have time to really search if players like Herrera are showing up later).

Simon: always playing his best and consistent, always that steady offense and strong anchor at the net.

Thondike: Always the unpredictable setter, but from what I’ve seen, struggles a little with tempo. He doesn’t quicken or slow the pace much and becomes fairly predictable depending on the pass. His offense has become more of a threat as I’ve been seeing him aggressively dump the ball like in the Iran game or the Japan or U.S.(?) game I think where he had the injury scare.

Lopez: I can’t help but feel he’s become quiet as a leader. His offense has stayed but it feels like something is off. If there’s something I’m unaware of, feel free to say so.

Those are only some of my thoughts that I’ve gathered. Their defensive positioning has definitely gotten better, it’s only a matter of actually getting those digs up. Their serve receive, as always, needs work as they struggle and fall into a slump sometimes. And their main offensive weapon, their serving, has been close to non existent. They’re streaky, but they’ve always relied on a strong serve to start a scoring run and it always looks like they’re looking for that spark and they’re rolling.

Overall, I do think Cuba can hopefully pick up the pace in week 3, but so far in these first two weeks, to me, have been underwhelming and not their 100.

(If anyone could tell me why Jesus Herrera hasn’t played for a couple years, that’ll be great. Ik he had a knee injury a couple years ago)