UCF graduate Phil Dalhausser’s bid for a second Olympic gold medal in beach volleyball ended Monday.
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Being played before a packed house at the “Coliseu on Copacabana”, Alison and Bruno scored a 2-1 (21-14, 12-21, 15-9) in 49 minutes over Dalhausser and Lucena for their third win in five global matches with the Americans.
Brazil’s Alison and Bruno won the quarterfinal match 21-14, 12-21, 15-9. That lined them up with Brazil’s Alison and Bruno, who arrived in Rio as the No. 1 seed.
“The strategy was to use the wind”. After Alison and Bruno made it 14-11, the Americans got on a roll and scored seven of the last eight points to force a third set.
The Brazilian crowd taunted the Americans by shouting “Zika” at them whenever they served, apparently in response to comments from some Americans – notably women’s soccer goalie Hope Solo – expressing concern over the mosquito-borne virus or mocking the host nation for the outbreak.
Cerutti lived up to his nickname “the mammoth”, throwing his heavy-set two-metre frame into a sequence of point-winning spikes and blocks.
“The fans are our third player. that’s what’s making the difference for us”, Cerutti said.
With Bruno playing in his first Olympics’, Alison will seeking his second medal after placing second with Emanuel Rego at the London 2012 Summer Games. “It’s unbelievable, eh? When they scream ‘Brazil” it gives me goosebumps. The Americans won in Hamburg in a match that Dalhausser said was the best they have played.
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Nick Lucena and Phil Dalhausser will be the first US team to face the Brazilians in the elimination round, a matchup that seemed would come no sooner than the Gold Medal Match.
