ountiful native Jake Gibb lost his chance for an Olympic medal after suffering a 2-1 (19-21, 21-18, 11-15) loss at the hands of the Latvian team on Sunday.
The loss eliminated Gibb and his playing partner, Sean Rosenthal, from the medal rounds for his second consecutive Olympic Games. In the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, the duo lost to Brazil in the quarterfinals, finishing in fifth place overall.
Gibb and Rosenthal’s loss was preceded by a two-set sweep over Russia (21-14, 22-20) late last week in the Round of 16. In that match, Gibb and Rosenthal finished the match by going on a 6-2 run to win the second set. Gibb ended the match with an ace, making the Russian duo of Konstantin Semenov and Sergey Prokopiev finish in ninth place.
“It was scary there for a little bit,” said Gibb to NBC reporters after the win over Russia. “We had a chance to go up three (points) in the second set against them and instead we fell behind. Sean (Rosenthal) came up big when we needed it, though.”
Two of the four final points in the match against Russia came from Rosenthal, who struggled early on to find a rhythm while Gibbkept the team in the game.
In all, Rosenthal had 13 kills on 35 attempts, but scored two of those kills to give the U.S. team two of its final four points to move onto its game against Latvia.
For more information check out the August 9 edition of Davis Clipper.
sgillet@davisclipper.com
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