Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 16, 2016 - USA and Poland will face each other in the second quarterfinal of the men’s volleyball tournament at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Wednesday.
They have met 33 times in major international competitions. Poland have won 18 of these matches, while USA have celebrated with the victory 15 times.
The two teams have met at two different Olympic Games – Mexico 1968 and Atlanta 1996. Both these encounters ended in straight sets, the first one in favour of Poland, the second one in favour of USA.
Most recently, Poland and USA played for the bronze medals of the FIVB Volleyball World League 2015. On July 19, 2015, in Rio de Janeiro, the Americans shut out their European opponents by 3-0 (25-22, 25-23, 25-23). Before that, they met four times in the preliminary round of the same competition with USA winning three of these four encounters.
To qualify for the quarterfinals at Rio 2016, USA finished third in Pool A with three wins, two losses and nine points, better than Brazil, but worse than Canada on set ratio.
Aaron Russell has scored 76 points for USA and ranks third in the Best Scorers chart of the tournament so far.
American players lead two of the other individual charts – Erik Shoji for Best Diggers and Micah Christenson for Best Setters.
Poland finished runner-up in Pool B with a 4-1 win-loss record and 12 points, the same as pool leaders Argentina, but worse on set ratio.
Bartosz Kurek is the best scorer of the tournament so far. The Polish opposite has made 89 points. He also leads the Best Spikers chart with 50.39% efficiency rate in attack.
A Polish player, Mateusz Bieniek, tops the Best Servers chart with an average of 0.47 aces per set.