BULGARIA hurdled Portugal and later on watched the United States took care of business against Slovenia on a stormy Monday night.
When all the dust settled, it will be the US facing Bulgaria in one of four pair of duels in the quarterfinals of the FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay.
The world No. 4 Americans charged back from an opening set loss and downed the Slovenians 19-25, 25-22, 25-17, 25-20 in the Round of 16.
Ditto with the Bulgarians, who essayed a 25-19, 25-23, 25-13 victory over the Portuguese, also in the final 16.
Six-foot-6 opposite spiker Gabi Garcia showed the way for the US with 26 points on seven aces while Ethan Champlin added 15 markers.
Jordan Ewert also had 14 for the US, which will tackle Bulgaria in the Last Eight on Thursday at the same venue.
Aleksandar Nikolov unleased a match-high 19 points on 17 attacks, a kill block, an ace, and eight excellent digs for the Lions.
Martin Atanasov and middle blocker Aleks Grozdanov also got nine and eight markers, respectively for Bulgaria.
“I think we kind of needed that first set adversity. Slovenia came out bombing serves really well as a lot of teams tended to do against our team,” US star setter Micah Christenson said. “But we knew that we could do better so I think we turned up our service pressure a little bit and then our passes really dialed in and fought off some big bombs from there.
“I think we’re guilty that this wasn’t the prettiest volleyball that we could have played and that’s a pretty cool story of this time is like we’re surviving, we’re fighting, we’re trying to do whatever we can to get more points on the other team this day. So, I think we did a really good job of finding a way to win today even if it wasn’t always pretty,” he added.
