The Cuban Marlon Yant had a brilliant performance in the fourth game of the final of the Italian Volleyball League and led his team, Lube Civitanova, to a resounding victory 3-1 (25-18, 27-25, 20-25 and 25-16) on the Trentino, which extends the definition of the title to a fifth clash of life or death.
Yant was the Most Valuable Player of the duel by scoring 24 units, 7 of them with his service. The man from Villa Clara impressed from the service line with a superlative performance and completely dismantled the rival defense, which allowed a total of 12 aces throughout the game.
The young Cuban assistant was also a whip with the attack, scoring 15 points with 65% effectiveness. This time the Caribbean was able to circumvent the powerful blocking of Trentino, led by the Serbian Marko Podrascanin, who only managed 2 cards in the defense of the net.
For the Lube, the Puerto Rican Gabi García Fernández (14 points) and the Italian Mattia Bottolo (11) seconded Marlon in a gray day for the young Bulgarian star Aleksandar Nikolov (7). The Trentino, for their part, leaned on the veteran Matey Kaziyski (16) and the rising star Alessandro Michieletto (12), but it was not enough to overcome the push of the current champions.
Now the final is tied at 2 victories per side and will be decided next Wednesday at the BLM Group Arena, the home of Trentino, where the Lube has not been able to win a set in the 2 most recent duels.
Civitanova has been crowned in the last 3 editions of the Italian Volleyball League, so he is looking for a fourth victory that would be historic. Since the late 80s of the last century, no team has won four consecutive titles on the transalpine circuit. The last squad to achieve this was Panini Modena between 1986 and 1989.
