JAKARTA, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- China lost to Vietnam 3-2 at the opening match for the Asiad men's volleyball here on Monday.
The match was a see-saw one, with scores of the five sets standing at 23-25, 24-26, 25-19, 25-22 and 19-21 respectively.
"We didn't give our best performance today, especially in the first two sets," said China coach Shen Qiong after the match.
China led the first two sets initially, but lost both of them narrowly to Vietnam due to a few mistakes.
Part of the reason for the mistakes is that the team had difficulty adjusting to the new venue, besides, some of the team members failed to be psychologically prepared for the toughness of the match against Vietnam, said Shen.
From the third set on, China put their acts together and fought back hard to win 25-19. In the fourth set, China carried on the momentum to win 25-22 and brought the game to a tie-breaker.
In the final set, both sides fought fiercely and took turns to score, until Vietnam expanded the lead to win 21-19.
"We were leading at first in the final set, but the opponents followed us so closely that our players were under a lot of pressure. This is a problem that we should be wary about in later games," said Shen.
"This was only the first match. We will review the mistakes and learn from them to give better performances later," he said.
Vietnam's Tu Thanh Thuan topped the scoring chart with 21 points, followed by China's Wang Jingyi with 20 points.
China scored a total of 64 spikes, 15 blocks, 8 serves, and 29 points through opponents' errors, while Vietnam took 42 points through China's mistakes.
In three other matches on Monday, Saudi Arabia beat Kyrgyzstan 3-1, Pakistan defeated Mongolia in straight sets, and Thailand beat Sri Lanka 3-1.
Later in the day, four other matches will be held.
