BARI, Italy, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) -- China held off Dominican Republic 3-2 in a clash between two previously unbeaten teams at Palaflorio on Saturday for their eighth straight win in the 2014 FIVB Women's Volleyball Championship.
With the hard-fought 25-19, 25-19, 22-25, 20-25, 15-10 victory, the Chinese women snapped a four-match full-set winning streak of Dominican Republic, who suffered their first defeat in eight matches.
"I am happy with the win. We knew that the Dominican team is quite good at playing five sets and we would like to try challenging them," said China head coach Lang Ping.
"It's a very tough match for us. They played very good defense and made it difficult for us to score," Lang added.
Having secured their berth in the third phase, China now led second round pool E with 16 points while Dominican Republic were third on 12 points.
Bethania De La Cruz was the top scorer of the match with 37 points while Zhu Ting led China with 23 points.
"Bethania is a real star. We made good preparation on her, but still could not stop her," said Lang.
In the tiebreaker, the Chinese women raced to a 5-2 lead and improved to 9-4 on back of some fine spikes of Zeng Chunlei and Zhu Ting. Dominican Republic steadily pulled within 13-10, but a smash of Yang Junjing and a kill of Zhu Ting wrapped up the marathon match in two hours and 23 minutes.
"I knew it would probably go to the fifth set, so I gave my starting players some rest in the fourth set," Lang said.
China outblocked Dominican Republic 14-7 and Xu Yunli contributed game high five stuffs to add 10 points for China.
China will play Italy in their last match in the second phase on Sunday evening.
Sixteen teams are playing in two groups in a round robin format at the second phase of the World Championship with top three finishers from each group to qualify for the Final Six Round.