AVP League: Mixed results for TKN, who win Olympics rematch but lose to Kraft-Cannon

Photographer Rick Atwood’s best photos from the weekend are in a gallery below. Click on any image to view full size.

Viewers tuned into CBS Sports Network for the national-TV debut of the AVP League were treated to a pair of electric matches set against a backdrop of vocal fans in the stands.

The crowd at the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park in suburban Austin, Texas, on Saturday night likely was the largest drawn by the cutting-edge AVP League to date. On the two-hour tape-delayed telecast that aired Sunday evening, both matches in the game between the Austin Aces and Palm Beach Passion produced high drama over three sets.

The headliner in the fourth weekend of the League was the showdown between USA Olympians Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss of the Aces and the Passion’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson, the silver medalists from this summer’s Paris Games. It lived up to the billing as Kloth and Nuss turned the tables on their red-hot rivals from Canada in a riveting 7-15, 15-10, 15-13 victory.

TKN (as they are known to their legion of fans) had dropped their last three meetings to Mel and Brandie, and looked on their way to a fourth after an error-filled first set that saw the 5-foot-6 Nuss make five errant attacks, hitting minus-.250.

But Nuss righted the ship, going error-free in the second set and the tiebreaker, while the 6-foot-4 Kloth ratcheted up the pressure from the service line. Taryn (15-for-21 against one error, .667 hitting efficiency) ripped three of her four aces in the third set, just as Kristen got dialed in on defense with eight digs.

“They’re Olympic medalists! It’s always a three-set battle,” Kloth said after TKN improved to 9-6 all-time against the Canadian superstars. “It’s always a fun match, and obviously it’s so much more fun to win.”

Nuss said that she fed off of the energy of the “hometown” crowd in Austin.

“The fans really rallied around our men before us, so that fired us up,” she noted. “I don’t even think I needed to warm up because the warmup was watching the men play.”

The see-saw victory by the Aces’ Paul Lotman and Billy Allen over the Passion’s Phil Dalhausser and Avery Drost went 57 minutes and might have worn out more of the fans’ fingernails than TKN’s triumph.

The 6-foot-7 Lotman, 39, hit 8-for-8 with two blocks in a 15-11 first set won by the Aces. Phil and Avery combined for 12 kills on 14 swings and took the second…