‘Two wins in a row + jump to 4th place’ not enough for Kim Ho-Cheol
“We won, but it wasn’t the match we wanted.”
IBK, led by head coach Kim Ho-cheol, won the Dodram 2023-2024 V-League women’s game against GS Caltex 3-1 (26-24 26-28 25-21 25-20) at Hwaseong Indoor Gymnasium on Saturday. With 19 points, IBK secured fourth place and reduced the gap to three points over third-place GS Caltex (22 points).
After the game, Kim said, “We tried to use the center attack during the game, but Ponpun insisted on it. It was too much and we were a little out of rhythm on the left side. We won, but it wasn’t the match we wanted.”
At the start of the second set, Kim and her coaching staff strongly protested a double contact call on Ponpun. “It depends on how you look at it,” Kim said. I was told that it was not a double contact if it was done in one motion. Of course, it’s two touches, but I said it’s not a double contact because it’s one motion, and the referees said it was. The referee said yes, it’s a single action because the ball is going up. I was just talking about why the standard is changing.”
“The worst thing I can do is serve. They say ‘hit it short’, ‘hit it to someone’, but it doesn’t work. I have a feeling the setters are mediocre. I train a lot, but I don’t have much control. I just need to be better at the toss,” he laughed.
“I think he looks down on our volleyball a little bit. It’s a lot better now, so when you play volleyball, you have to give it your best shot and sometimes you don’t do that. The Thai players have been training for a long time, and there is a gap in that part. Coming from a setter background, I can see that. If you keep talking, you won’t get the toss that the setter wants, so I try to refrain as much as possible.”
IBK will be fighting for the middle of the pack. “If we can organize ourselves well, we have a better distribution of attacking routes than last season. We’re not as good in the center as we thought we would be, so we’ll have to find a way to take advantage of that. We can’t just play on both sides. We’re trying to coordinate. Our central attack is one of the weakest among the six teams, so we are working hard to improve it.”