U.S. stalls in opener

For all the power and thunder of the World League volleyball showdown between the United States and Serbia and Montenegro Friday night, the match ultimately slipped away.

Despite cruising to an easy first-set win and serving set point in the second set with a 24-19 lead, the United States fell 13-25, 36-34, 25-22, 25-17.

The two teams meet again tonight at 8 at the Arena.

“I think the USA let a good opportunity slip away,” Serbian team captain Goran Vujevic said. “But I think we showed that we’re the better team at this moment.”

Those words rankled his U.S. counterpart.

“That won’t happen again,” outside hitter Reid Priddy promised.

The U.S. national team came into the Pool A showdown holding a slim lead over Serbia and Montenegro by virtue of its four straight wins over Japan. The momentum from that sweep, in which the team lost only one set.

That momentum brought the team into the showdown in the Spokane Arena’s Star Theater ready to roll.

Roll they did.

After a back-and-forth opening, the United States took over the match with a powerful offense that had the Serbians on their heels.

James Polster and Priddy each had four thundering kills in the first set and team captain Thomas Hoff, questionable coming into the match with a gimpy knee, added three more.

“I think we showed in this match that they (Serbia and Montenegro) don’t have an answer for our offense. Period,” Priddy said.

The momentum carried into the second set, but not to the conclusion.

With the team poised to take a 2-0 lead in the match, the little things went wrong.

Serbia and Montenegro took sideout at 24-20 and Andrija Geric served four straight winning points to knot the score at 24.

Neither team could take command after that – with both squads piling up service error after service error to go thwart stunning kills.

“The frustrating thing about it was we were making errors when we were just trying to get the ball in play,” Priddy said. “It’s frustrating to lose when you’re sitting there ready to close the team out.

“I’m tired of losing matches like this.”

With the match tied at 1-1, Serbia and Montenegro kept the pressure on.

“I’m not entirely sure what happened,” U.S. coach Hugh McCutcheon said. “We’ll have to go back and look at the tape to see. I don’t know if we just got ahead of ourselves with our passing or what.

“This kind of competition is why we’re playing in the World League. If we learn from a match like this and are a better team because of it, then I guess the pain of a night like this will have been worth it.”

Ivan Milijkovic, a 6-7 hitting machine who had 71 kills in World League play coming into the match, added 25 more on 53 attempts.

The last time the United States faced Serbia and Montenegro was in an Olympic tuneup game in 2004, with the U.S. winning in three games.

Priddy finished with 16 kills to lead the United States.