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One of my favorite beach volleyball duos ever, crude and outlandish Tim Hovland paired with steady, classy Mike Dodd.
Dodd's commentary is excellent. He doesn't try to be as flashy as the other guy, Chris Marlowe, the captain of the '84 gold medal squad even though he barely played. When I was in college, Marlowe tried to hit on my hot date, Suzy, when I took her to a USC/UCLA volleyball match at Pauley. So I was never exactly thrilled with him myself.
Damn, this Brazilian team is loaded with explosive talent, straight down kills from behind the 10 foot line.
I'm still a volleyball purist who prefers side-out scoring to rally scoring and calls them games and not sets. There is no way a team should be able to close out a game or match with a routine side-out and earn a point for it. In the side-out days, it was hardly uncommon for a team to overcome a 14-9 deficit. Now that's virtually impossible, although the USA made a rare comeback from 20-12 down to Greece the other night.
Tonight on ESPN the scroll lists the volleyball scores as 3 sets to 0, not 3 games to 0. I have no idea how that odd terminology started, or why it has become accepted.
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