Italy (w) vs China (w) Prediction: Chinese to do even better than four days ago

Anyone who thought that the teams in the playoffs would get an opponent from another group, was mistaken. Well, we'll watch the second match in four days between the European champions and the 2016 Olympic champions. For our taste, it would be more interesting to see something we haven't seen yet. However, maybe that's what will happen?

On October 8, in her second group stage match against China, Paola Egonu scored 27 points in just three sets. Even for her it's a lot. Of course, this woman can score much more, but not in three sets. Paola scored 31 points in four games against Belgium and 37 against Brazil in five. She's averaging six and a half points per set, which is around 26 points in four sets. If you're confident that four sets won't happen again, you can try to play Egonu's Individual Total Under.

I've reported before that the Italians were serving pretty toothless at the beginning of the tournament. It is a thing of the past: in the second group stage Mazzanti's women won by two to four points over all their opponents. In particular the Chinese scored 7-3. So we assume that advantage of Italy in aces of -1.5 and even -2.5 is a workable variant.

Also by points the Italians lost only to Brazil 13-14, that surprised us very much.

The Chinese women are superior to Italy only in accuracy on the serve. They lost their serves much less often, which was shown in the first encounter: the Italian team won by service losses with a score 9-2. But it's quite possible that in order not to get another 0-3, China will start to serve more aggressively.

So, we have a minus handicap for Italy in terms of aces and, in particular, in terms of service faults. We're not sure about the blocks. In addition to the stats, Total Over (171.5) Points looks interesting: well, it is not often that the Chinese will lose in three zeros. Here's what we picked:

– Total Over (171.5) Points for 1.85;

– 1st Set TO (44.5) for 1.72;

– Total Sets Over 4.5 for 4.10.