RIMINI, Italy, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Japan won over defending champions Russia 3-2 here on Sunday for its third straight win in the 2021 men's Volleyball Nations League.

Following Saturday's tie-break win over the Netherlands, the Japanese men went on to claim the 28-26, 26-28, 20-25, 25-21 and 16-14 victory in another marathon match with Issei Otake leading the scoring with 25 points. Kenta Takanashi and Tatsuya Fukuzawa added 17 and 14 points respectively.

Japan displayed their fantastic skills in defense as they recorded 92 digs, compared to 60 for Russia.

"I'm proud of our players, because we came here to gain experience. We came here to fight for every point and not only look at the result - just try to increase our level of our standing and they did perfectly - especially defence, coverage," said Japan head coach Blain Philippe.

"Playing against great teams like here let us gain important experience, especially ahead of the Olympic Games. We want to get the maximum experience and win the maximum number of matches and enjoy volleyball, because enjoying volleyball is also important, and we did that tonight."

Brazil and France joined Japan in the unbeaten trio after collecting respective wins on Sunday. Douglas Correia de Souza and Wallace de Souza combined for 41 points to lift Brazil over Canada 3-1 while France also took a four-set victory against Australia.

Also on Sunday, the Netherlands lost to Iran 3-0, Germany outlasted Bulgaria 3-2, the United States downed Argentina 3-1, Serbia saw off Italy 3-1 and Slovenia beat Poland 3-1.

After three rounds of preliminaries, Brazil led the standings with nine points, followed by France with eight and Japan with seven.

Top four finishers from the 16-team round-robin preliminaries will advance into the semifinals. Enditem

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