Olympic Volleyball preview on SI.com

[vball20]

sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/olympics/2012/07/23/london-olympic-womens-indoor-volleyball-preview/index.html

[Sbilo]

Its going to be a battle of opposites in London. Sheilla, Gamova, Hooker, Darnel... Can't wait for the games to begin! Nice article, btw.

[mplssetter]

Great preview article! At first I was shocked that SI put out a knowledgable article on international level volleyball, and then I saw that the author was Bev Oden.

[pogoball]

I haven't read the print articles yet.

On first glance, they have a beach volleyball picture as the opening cover of the article -- however, I saw nothing that indicated writing about any volleyball team. Very disappointing. Most sports have at least a half-page article or so.

They do give all medal predictions and say that the women's team will win silver after the Brazilians. Not a terrible prediction, but just seems unlikely. The US team has consistently beaten the Brazilians over the last few years.

Their volleyball predictions:
Men Indoor: Russia, Brazil, Poland
Men Beach: Dalhausser/Rogers, Cerutti/Rego, Gibb/Rosenthal
Women Indoor: Brazil, US, Russia
Women Beach: Franca/Silva, Chen/Xi, May-Treanor/Walsh

Reasonable predictions overall.

edit: Their comment after the indoor men prediction: "Hugh McCutcheon, who coached US men to '08 gold, now leads US Women". Seriously, a comment not even about the current team?

[Gorflorg Orshforg]

Jul 25, 2012 9:22:18 GMT -5 pogoball said:

I haven't read the print articles yet.

On first glance, they have a beach volleyball picture as the opening cover of the article -- however, I saw nothing that indicated writing about any volleyball team. Very disappointing. Most sports have at least a half-page article or so.

They do give all medal predictions and say that the women's team will win silver after the Brazilians. Not a terrible prediction, but just seems unlikely. The US team has consistently beaten the Brazilians over the last few years.

Their volleyball predictions:
Men Indoor: Russia, Brazil, Poland
Men Beach: Dalhausser/Rogers, Cerutti/Rego, Gibb/Rosenthal
Women Indoor: Brazil, US, Russia
Women Beach: Franca/Silva, Chen/Xi, May-Treanor/Walsh

Reasonable predictions overall.

edit: Their comment after the indoor men prediction: "Hugh McCutcheon, who coached US men to '08 gold, now leads US Women". Seriously, a comment not even about the current team?

I saw their predictions in the magazine and I think they're pretty dumb. It's obvious they don't give a %*$# about volleyball, which is to be expected of course. Russia would have been the favorites on the men's side a month ago, but injuries, poor play and Poland's ascendence has dropped them. Brazil was the silver favorite a month ago, but now whether they even make the quarters is a serious question. And of course we are the favorites on the women's side. Stupid predictions.