Volleyball Bundesliga club Netzhoppers KW-Bestensee started the long journey home from an away game at VfB Friedrichshafen with a three-set defeat. The Brandenburgers, weakened by illness and injury, lost to the record champions from Lake Constance on Saturday evening with 0: 3 (20:25, 22:25, 22:25). Coach Tomasz Wasilkowski’s team remains in seventh place in the table with four points from five games.
Only 48 hours after their five-set victory in the Champions League against French champions Montpellier HSC VB, the Friedrichshafen team showed at least slight signs of fatigue. The Netzhoppers got their opponent into trouble in both the second and third sets.
In the second round, the guests took a 21:18 lead via the intermediate scores of 8:4 and 17:14 after another point from their middle blocker Max Chamberlain and were close to equalizing the set 1:1. But as a result, the team around veteran Dirk Westphal completely lost their line and conceded a series with 1:7 points. In the final section, the Netzhoppers came back to 22:23 after clearly falling behind, but were not able to make up any more decisive ground in this phase either.
The Netzhoppers’ personal dilemma was reflected in the fact that coach Wasilkowski had no alternative to Mario Schmidgall due to the injury-related absence of Byron Keturakis in the important setter position. The situation with the libero was similar. Moritz Eckardt, although ailing himself, had to play through because Gian-Luca Berger, who was ill with the flu, did not even travel with him.
Volleyball Bundesliga, Volleyball Bundesliga table, Netzhoppers schedule, squad of players
