It’s been an up and down stay so far for the US Women’s Volleyball Team at the World Grand Prix in Taipei. The US Women, who won a thrilling 3-2 victory over Domican Republic on Friday, followed today with a disappointing 3-2 loss to undefeated Netherlands.

The USA jumped out to a great start, winning the first set 25-12, only to see the Dutch fight back to take the next two sets, 25-22 and 25-16. The US Women rallied to win the fourth set 25-21, but dropped the deciding 5th set 15-13. Captain Nancy Metcalf and Penn State’s Nicole Fawcett led the US Women with 14 points each. Netherlands’ Captain Manon Flier led all scorers with 17 points.

“Obviously Netherlands played a little better than we did,” USA Head Coach Hugh McCutcheon said in his post match press conference. “Although our young players were doing good job,” McCutcheon added, “the main issue [is that] we could not sustain harder tests from the opponent. But we have seen possibilities in our players and believe they will do better.”

The FIVB has posted final match statistics for the USA (pdf) and for Netherlands as well as a Live Score match summary.

There’s also a match Write-up from FIVB.