Photographer Jim Wolf was in Anaheim and a gallery of his best shots follow. Click on any photo to view full size and be sure to give him credit if you share.
The San Diego Smash embraced a “nothing-to-lose mentality” in playing their way into the AVP League playoff picture, going 3-1 and coming within an eyelash of winning all four.
The Austin Aces nearly painted themselves into a corner during a Week 7 train wreck that dropped them to .500.
And the New York Nitro split their four matches at the spacious Honda Center in Anaheim, California, but that was good enough to nail down the top seed in the League playoffs.
“We (wanted) to get first place and it’s a nice check,” the Nitro’s Taylor Sander said.
All in all, the penultimate weekend of the League’s regular season was full of surprising results, not the least of which was that the Aces’ high-powered women’s pair of USA Olympians Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss went 0-for-2, dropping both matches in sweeps and not scoring more than 12 points in any set.
The Smash jumped to 5-7 in the standings, with USA Olympians Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (3-3) taking down the Aces’ Billy Allen and Paul Lotman in three sets on Saturday night and sweeping Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost of the Palm Beach Passion on Sunday afternoon. The Smash’s Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez (2-4) pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the League series when they served Kloth and Nuss off the court in a 15-10, 15-12 victory.
The 6-foot-1 Rodriguez sizzled in the first set with four aces, including a feathery hybrid float serve that dropped untouched on set point. Urango kept the pressure on from behind the line in the second, dialing up four more aces. Geena’s “left-to-left” sharp-angled topspin jumper gave TKN (as they are called) fits and Urango tallied the match-winner on a slicing serve that landed inches from the sideline. The Smash duo complemented their serving by combining to hit .500 (17-for-30 against two errors) in the match.
“The past few weeks we’ve been training to be more aggressive from the service line because without wind and the elements, you need to execute a little more efficiently with your serve,” Urango explained.
Added Rodriguez: “Where we are sitting (coming into the weekend 2-6), we have nothing to lose, so we wanted to come out and be aggressive.”
Budinger was effusive in his praise of his teammates: “They sided out like champs and they (were) SO AGGRESSIVE serving against one of the best teams in the world.”
The veteran Urango expounded on the Smash’s relaxed outlook in a sideline interview during the match in which Chase and Miles withstood Allen and Lotman 13-15, 16-14, 15-10.
“We had a month off, so we knew we’ve got nothing to lose here,” Geena said. “We came in with a little free, let’s have fun, nothing to lose mentality and that helped us.”
Former NBA player Budinger put an exclamation point on the second set by serving a flat floater to the sideline that Allen shanked. The Smash pair gained 7-4 separation in the tiebreaker with a rejection by Chase against Lotman, a kill in transition by Budinger on an option swat, Evans’ deep ace down the middle and an impromptu block by Miles during a “scramble” point. The 6-foot-7 Budinger closed the show with a left-handed putdown on a second-ball attack. Chase’s gaudy stat line read 14-for-22 with one error (.591), two aces and five blocks.
“Geena and Toni set the tone, so we decided to step up as well,” Evans said.
“I got in a little blocking rhythm in that third and that really helped me,” Budinger added.
Chase and Miles kept the good times rolling a day later, weathering a tight and lengthy opening set to bounce Dalhausser and Drost 21-19, 15-10. Budinger capped an other-worldly weekend by pounding 15 kills on 19 errorless attacks (.789), blocking five balls and making seven digs.
Urango and Rodriguez, however, ran into a pair on a mission in the form of Olympic silver medalists Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson of the Passion. The Canadian superstars withstood multiple match points in the tiebreaker to complete a remarkable comeback and prevail 15-10, 12-15, 16-14. Geena and Toni served no aces this time. Brandie hit .461 (15-for-26 with three errors) with four blocks and three digs, while Mel picked up 11 digs.
On Saturday night, Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson again demonstrated their poise by holding off USA Olympians Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes of the Nitro 11-15, 15-13, 15-13. The reigning world champions got out to a 6-3 lead in the tiebreaker, but that was erased on Mel’s high-line shot, Brandie’s straight-down “take-out-the-trash” kill on an overpass and a hitting error by Cheng that flew long. The count remained knotted through 12, and the Passion pair went up 14-12 on Wilkerson’s deep middle-to-middle topspin jump-serve ace. Humana-Paredes sided-out on a blast down the line to end a battle that has been called an instant classic.
Mel and Brandie went 5-3 in League play, but the Passion overall finished 6-10 and are out of the playoff hunt. Dalhausser and Drost were 1-7, also dropping a lopsided 15-7, 15-8 affair to the Nitro’s Sander and Taylor Crabb that saw both teams entertain the fans with skyballs. No scenario exists among the remaining games that could have the 10-loss Passion crack the top four spots.
Meanwhile, the Aces went further in the hole during their game against the Nitro on Sunday. Kloth and Nuss (3-3) failed to fire again and were handled fairly easily by rivals Cheng and Hughes (6-2) 15-10, 15-11. The Manhattan Beach Open champions had no answer for Cheng, who swung at .824 (that’s not a typo) efficiency, getting 15 kills on 17 attacks against a single error. Nuss, who has averaged 3.46 digs per set in the League, totaled an atypical three digs in the match.
The Aces’ only salvation came when Allen and Lotman (3-3), seemingly dead in the water after the first set, upset the Taylors (6-2) 7-15, 15-13, 15-13. Toss out that opening set, in which Billy and Paul hit .000 combined, and the veterans compiled a .486 attacking percentage (21-for-37 with three errors). Their victory put the Aces at 6-6, still very much in the playoff race with a potential for 10 wins.
The Nitro (12-4 with 34 tiebreaker points accrued) have clinched the No. 1 seed. If the Dallas Dream (8-4, 22 tiebreaker points) win their remaining four matches in sweeps, they also would be 12-4 with 34 tiebreaker points. However, when the Nitro and Dream played in Week 3, the teams split their matches, but the Nitro outscored the Dream 56-51, which is the third tiebreaking criterion.
The Miami Mayhem (10-6 with 29 tiebreaker points) are locked into one of the four spots in the semifinals, at worst as the No. 3 seed. The most tiebreaker points the Aces could earn with four two-set victories is 28. No scenario exists in which the Smash or the LA Launch (4-8) can total 10 wins, so neither could leapfrog the Mayhem.
However, advancing to the postseason with nine wins, or even eight, remains possible, so the Smash and Launch cannot be counted out.
The Saturday night crowd at the Honda Center ringed most of the eight or so rows of the lower bowl, with attendance on Sunday afternoon being more sparse, as has been typical of League weekends. The first four matches of Week 7 from Anaheim are archived on the AVP’s free YouTube channel. The four matches on Sunday aired exclusively on CBS Sports Network and will be posted to YouTube 10 days after the live telecast, in accordance with the AVP’s media-rights agreement with CBS Sports.
The Aces and Smash will join the Launch and Dream on Week 8 as the final series stop of the regular season moves to Texas. Doubleheaders at the 4,000-seat Comerica Center in Frisco (a Dallas/Fort Worth suburb) are scheduled on Nov. 2 and 3.
Here are the lineups for the last of eight regular-season AVP League weekends:
Saturday
LA Launch (4-8; Tim Bomgren and Troy Field, 1-5; Betsi Flint and Julia Scoles, 3-3) vs. Austin Aces (6-6; Paul Lotman and Billy Allen, 3-3; Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss, 3-3).
San Diego Smash (5-7; Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, 3-3; Geena Urango and Toni Rodriguez, 2-4) vs. Dallas Dream (8-4; Miles Partain and Andy Benesh, 6-0; Hailey Harward and Kylie Deberg, 2-4).
Sunday
Launch vs. Smash (in a rematch from Week 1) and Aces vs. Dream (in a rematch from Week 2).
The results from each match in the series will go 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. The first criterion for advancing to the playoffs is team winning percentage. The second is tiebreaker points, awarded on a scale of three for a two-set sweep, two for a three-set victory and one for a three-set defeat.
