The Austin Aces laid a solid foundation, but plenty of heavy lifting needs to be done before a berth in the AVP League playoffs can be secured.
Two games over .500 at 5-3, the Aces project as one of the teams that will join the New York Nitro (10-2) and Miami Mayhem (10-6) in the single-elimination League semifinals. The Nitro will complete their four-game regular season in Week 7 as the League remains indoors in Southern California at the 18,000-seat Honda Center in Anaheim.
The marquee game this weekend comes on Sunday afternoon when the league-leading Nitro and fourth-place Aces square off, highlighted by a battle between the Nitro’s Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes and the Aces’ Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, the pairs who represented the United States in the Paris Olympics. Cheng and Hughes lead the all-time series 5-3 but lost the only meeting in 2024, falling in three sets (15-13 in the tiebreaker) in the AVP Chicago Heritage Series semifinals.
From a standings perspective, the match is more of a must-win for Manhattan Beach Open winners Kloth and Nuss, who come into Week 7 at 3-1, than it is for reigning world champions Cheng and Hughes, who have gone 5-1. A 2-2 record by the Aces likely would keep them firmly in the playoff mix, but a sub-.500 mark might open doors for the three teams with losing records that remain alive.
CBS Sports Network will expand its coverage of the AVP League to four hours on Sunday, airing both games live from 4 pm. to 8 p.m. Eastern.
Kloth and Nuss on Saturday night will face Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez (1-3) of the San Diego Smash, who have been idle since the League’s third week. The Smash are 2-6, but loom as a postseason X-factor at the bottom of the League standings since – even though it would require a huge uphill climb – their best possible record is 10-6.
The key to a winning weekend for the Aces very well could be their men’s pair of veterans Paul Lotman and Billy Allen, who went 0-2 during Week 2 in Miami then won both of their matches in Austin on the fourth series stop.
Lotman and Allen face tough sledding against USA Olympians Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (1-3) of the Smash and the Nitro’s Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander, the AVP Huntington Beach winners who come in at 5-1.
“It’s been both hard and fun to watch without playing (the last two weeks). This League is so new that I’m not even sure who to root for because I’m not really sure how it affects us while I’m watching,” Allen said with a chuckle during an interview with Volleyball Magazine.
“But this week is really important. We put ourselves in a good spot by doing well in Austin the last time we played. Most of our focus is on our side. Paul and I have tried to take care of our matches and trust that our women’s team will do what they do.
“We definitely want to contribute to this team and we knew going in that we were paired with a very strong women’s (duo),” added Allen, one of the AVP’s elder statesmen at age 43. “We just want to do our part and we’re hoping to pull out more wins in the last two events.”
Billy offered some insight on the competitive nature of the League and the challenges presented by their opponents in Anaheim.
“Everybody in the League is tough,” he said. “I haven’t looked at the bracket once and thought, ‘Oh, we’ve got an easy weekend.’ The Taylors have very good strong serving so we’re going to be prepared to fight that off, while staying in system as much as possible. Chase and Miles are a very good defensive team. Miles is very fast back there and Chase puts up a big block, so it’s going to be a flat-out battle. Against them, we’re just hoping to be able to side-out against that defense and vary our offense a little bit.”
Allen is an assistant coach for Stanford’s high-powered beach program and lives in Northern California. Former USA indoor Olympian Lotman, 38, resides in Southern California. Their long-distance pairing in 2024 has jelled despite a dearth of practice time.
“We’ve had one practice this year,” Billy said. “I flew down to San Diego before Huntington (in mid-May) and we got a weekend in together. Other than that, it’s just been showing up to tournaments and playing, which is kind of why we both are pleasantly surprised with being in (this) position. One of the reasons Paul and I joined this year was we seemed pretty aligned with where we’re at with volleyball.”
The partnership with the 6-foot-7 Lotman produced results that exceeded Allen’s expectations.
“I have a full-time job and going into the season, I was just grateful to play in a couple of AVPs,” he said. “We did better than we thought, and we qualified for the League, which was awesome. Everything has been just icing on the cake.
“Every year the last couple of years has been a year-to-year decision for me. I’m not sure how much longer I’m going (to play on the AVP), but if I have a good partner, I’m in the main draw and I feel competitive, then I’m going to keep doing it.”
Meanwhile, the Palm Beach Passion (4-8) close out the regular season, having a long-shot possibility of cracking the final four if they win all of their matches.
A loaded lineup on the women’s side in Anaheim includes not only the two USA Olympic pairs but the silver medalists from the Paris Games, the Passion’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson (3-3) of Canada. The match pitting Mel and Brandie against Cheng and Hughes on Saturday night is another highlight of Week 7. Their all-time series is tied 5-5. The wildly popular Canadian stars also will face Urango and Rodriguez on Sunday afternoon.
However, the Passion’s Paul Dalhausser and Avery Drost (1-5), who have absorbed some tough losses (20-18 in the third set to Lotman-Allen and 16-14 in the tiebreaker to the Brooklyn Blaze’s Cody Caldwell and Seain Cook), are underdogs in their matches against the dynamic Taylors and Budinger-Evans.
The weekend streaming/TV schedule will see the two games on Saturday night streamed live on the free Bally Live app and ballylive.com. Those four matches will be archived on the AVP’s free YouTube channel shortly after completion.
As noted, both games on Sunday will air live exclusively on the CBSSN cable channel. A replay will be shown at midnight Eastern. The four matches from Sunday will go up on the AVP’s YouTube channel 10 days after the live telecast, in accordance with the AVP’s media-rights agreement with CBS Sports.
Here are the lineups at the Honda Center in Anaheim for the seventh of eight regular-season AVP League weekends:
Saturday
Austin Aces (5-3) vs. San Diego Smash (2-6)
Women (6 p.m. Pacific): Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss (Aces, 3-1) vs. Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez (Smash, 1-3).
Men (7 p.m.): Paul Lotman and Billy Allen (Aces, 2-2) vs. Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (Smash, 1-3).
New York Nitro (10-2) vs. Palm Beach Passion (4-8)
Women (8 p.m.): Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes (Nitro, 5-1) vs. Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson (Passion, 3-3).
Men (9 p.m.): Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander (Nitro, 5-1) vs. Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost (Passion, 1-5).
Sunday
Palm Beach Passion vs. San Diego Smash
Women (1 p.m. Pacific): Humana-Paredes–Wilkerson (Passion) vs. Urango-Rodriguez (Smash).
Men (2 p.m.): Dalhausser-Drost (Passion) vs. Budinger–Evans (Smash).
New York Nitro vs. Austin Aces
Women (3 p.m.): Cheng-Hughes (Nitro) vs. Kloth-Nuss (Aces).
Men (4 p.m.): Taylor Crabb–Sander (Nitro) vs. Lotman-Allen (Aces).
The results from each match in the series will count toward determining the four qualifiers for the bracket-style championship rounds on Nov. 9 and 10 at the Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California. Each team will play four regular-season games. The first criterion for advancing to the playoffs is team winning percentage.
