"Laying Traps" (Japanese:
Overview[]
The third set starts with Atsumu Miya's serve. Nishinoya is still having a hard time receiving the latter's serves but manages to receive one after a service ace. Different series of ball games are taking place from time-to-time as the game carries onto the final blow of the whistle. Tsukishima and Kageyama are given the task of blocking the opposing team's main spikers, which they carefully execute.
Plot[]
Atsumu does a float serve which Nishinoya assumed to be out but curved in the last second, scoring a point for Inarizaki. Ōmimi commends on his clean serves for the day and sees no problem with Atsumu changing his serves to jump serves but Kita tells him that even if that was done, Atsumu's successful serve count would not drop. Kita notes that based off Atsumu's character, if Atsumu's spike serves are received, he'd wished he'd stuck to jump serves and if he stuck to jump serves and scored, he'd be motivated to score more. Atsumu serves again and Nishinoya barely receives it, aware that his reflexes (Nishinoya) were slower for the day and understood that he was afraid. The ball is set to Azumane who scores.
Suguru takes note that Karasuno has gone a full rotation (as a spectator). Seeing this, Mika assures him that he can fanboy about volleyball. With consent, Suguru excitedly talks about rotation and their rules which led to his impressions of the two currently competing schools wherein Inarizaki had all-rounded type players whereas Karasuno had players which strived in certain positions. This time, Kageyama serves straight to Aran which is then passed to Atsumu who sets it to Osamu. He spikes it but Tsukishima manages a one-touch on it. With this, Suguru realizes that Karasuno's current rotation set-up was to constantly match Tsukishima and Osamu up which is confirmed with a given flashback of Ukai assigning the positions.
Azumane spikes the ball through a two-man block but Osamu receives it. The ball is later given to Atsumu who sets it to Aran. Right then, another flashback shows that Keishin intends to have Kageyama match up to Aran as much as possible. With that, Kageyama blocks out Aran's spike by himself.