T&T suf­fered an­oth­er straight sets de­feat (25-11, 25-12, 25-11) this time at the hands of de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons USA in Pool C on day two of the 2018 FIVB Women's World Cham­pi­onship at the Kobe Green Are­na, Os­a­ka Bay, Japan, yes­ter­day.

The Amer­i­cans fol­lowed up on their vic­to­ry on the pre­vi­ous night over Azer­bai­jan. They were led by Michelle Bartsch-Hack­ley who top scored with 15 points which in­clud­ed 10 spikes, three blocks and two aces to se­cure the vic­to­ry which pushed them two wins from as many match­es.

The USA start­ed with an ear­ly 8-5 lead tak­ing con­trol of the set as T&T strug­gled to find any mo­men­tum. The Amer­i­can coach Karch Ki­raly rest­ed his start­ing team and opt­ed to go with the bench, which was equal­ly as strong and that caused a lot of prob­lems for T&T.

With key play­ers Renelle Forde out of the match due to ill­ness and Deli­cia Pierre al­so out with a groin in­jury which will be as­sessed to­day, T&T had no room to make changes as this core six had to bat­tle it out. US set­ter Micha Han­cock was key in mak­ing the plays to keep T&T mid­dle block­er Sinead Jack and Jali­cia Ross-Ky­dd in con­stant check dur­ing the con­test.

T&T got off same as the first go­ing in­to the sec­ond set but the US de­fence was flaw­less as it blocked or touch every­thing that crossed the net and counter-at­tacked on T&T. T&T's libero Afe­sha Olton strug­gled to bring a steady game with her re­ceiv­ing dur­ing the sec­ond set as the US stuck to its game plan by serv­ing tough and forc­ing T&T out of a sys­tem where it strug­gled to score against the blocks put up by the Amer­i­cans in de­fence.

"Our Team did a very nice job of tak­ing care of our side of the net and not wor­ry­ing about the oth­er team and we ex­e­cut­ed our game plan. We were serv­ing tough and I like how every­body con­tributed so much this ear­ly in this tour­na­ment", the US coach Karch Ki­raly said.

T&T made 17 er­rors to the USA just six, which nev­er gave T&T an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete with the op­po­si­tion. The in­ex­pe­ri­ence T&T team ac­cept­ed the match as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence as Dar­lene Ramdin and Kyrs­tle Es­delle did every­thing pos­si­ble to keep T&T in the match with their pow­er­ful swings, but to no avail, as the main com­po­nent, the re­cep­tion nev­er ma­te­ri­alised in the match.

So with key mid­dle at­tack­ers Jali­cia Ross-Kidd and Sinead Jack out of the at­tack­ing front the team had to re­ly on its block­ing as Jack con­tributed two and two aces which was way be­low her best.

Af­ter end­ing the sec­ond set 25-12 the con­fi­dent Amer­i­cans came out to fin­ish the job as they jumped out to a 10-5 lead in the sec­ond set and the T&T women had no an­swer. Chan­non Thomp­son was T&T's top scor­er with eight points of 24 at­tempts dur­ing her nev­er give up dis­play as she kept the fire-pow­er with strong blocks of the many US at­tacks.

T&T coach was forced to bring in the cap­tain Forde to try and strength­en the team's at­tack and block­ing line up, but the USA nev­er stopped press­ing en route to a com­mand­ing 25-11 set win and match vic­to­ry.

T&T coach Fran­cis­co Cruz said af­ter the match, "This game rep­re­sent­ed for T&T a big chal­lenge. The dif­fer­ence in the lev­el of USA and T&T is too much. We have played against the Unit­ed States be­fore in oth­er com­pe­ti­tions but nev­er against the first team of the Unit­ed States. For our play­ers, this was a very good ex­pe­ri­ence".

The Ca­lyp­so spik­ers will have a rest day to­day. The team will as­sem­ble for two prac­tice ses­sions to­geth­er with a gym work­out, as the play­ers pre­pare for their third match against Thai­land which lost in a gru­elling five-set­ter on Sun­day against the Rus­sians. Thai­land is a very fast team which al­ready record­ed the vic­to­ry against South Ko­rea in its open­ing Group C match on Sat­ur­day.