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Post by bownlovingfreak on Aug 20, 2008 22:24:29 GMT -5
Watching the Serbia/USA match and they referred the USA team's performances in 1996 and 2000 as a disaster. Why is that? I figure they just lost a lot, anymore to that?
The American team now seems quite unified, which is nice to see.
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Post by rogero1 on Aug 20, 2008 23:52:52 GMT -5
Because compared to the previous three Olympics ('84, '88, & '92) where the men won 2 golds and a bronze, not getting a medal is like the UCLA men not winning the NCAA Men's Championship.
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Post by bunnywailer on Aug 21, 2008 3:07:07 GMT -5
Watching the Serbia/USA match and they referred the USA team's performances in 1996 and 2000 as a disaster. Why is that? I figure they just lost a lot, anymore to that? The American team now seems quite unified, which is nice to see. 1996 - USA Men were expected to challenge for a medal, with a mix of veteran Olympic Gold Medalists including Bob Ctvrklik/Scott Fortune/Jeff Stork (Gold '88, Bronze '92) and Bryan Ivie (Bronze '92), along with new young talent including Lloy Ball/Jeff Nygaard/Mike Lambert/Dan Landry/John Hyden. They had come out of nowhere and won a bronze at the World Championships in 1994 in Ball's first major international competition. In reality, the team was highly dysfunctional and immature. Lloy Ball, in the spotlight, seemed more interested in displaying his tattoos and in-your-face attitude than in actually playing good volleyball. And they had a coach (Fred Sturm) who, in my opinion, let the inmates run the asylum. I believe they had a chance to still make the medal round despite a mediocre 2-3 pool record, but needed someone else (Cuba? Brazil?) to beat someone else in their pool. Didn't happen. I vividly remember Bryan Ivie blasting two consecutive D balls into the antenna as the USA lost their final pool match. 2000 - USA again expected to do well in the Olympic tournament. Gold medal winning coach Doug Beal had taken over the reins of the USA men in 1997 and done very well in the 2000 World League. Marv Dunphy, the USA's other gold medal winning coach, came on board after taking a sabbatical from his head coaching position at Pepperdine, to help the USA men back to the gold medal stand. USA Men started off bad and got worse, going 0-5 in pool play and finishing equal 11th with Egypt in the tournament. Reasons for not doing well in Sydney included allegations of overtraining under Beal's system, the inability to effectively execute jump serves or pass jump serves because of the high altitude training in Colorado Springs, and illness/injury of some key players (I believe Nygaard came down with mononucleosis and played minimally and was not effective in the Olympic tournament). |
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