Any of the four high-profile men’s pairs could go 2-0 as the innovative AVP League gathers steam in Week 3 with a return to Southern California. Or any could be 0-2. Or perhaps more likely, all might finish 1-1.
The quartet of men’s matches split between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon are pure crapshoots. They figure to hog the spotlight as the League series transitions indoors to Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State, since all could be finals or semifinals of traditional bracket-style AVP tournaments.
The action from Week 3 of the AVP League will be streamed live on the free Bally Live app and ballylive.com, and the matches have been archived on the AVP’s free YouTube channel.
The lineup for the League’s third week appears to pack more potentially contentious matches than fans saw in the first two go-rounds at the UCLA tennis stadium and the Hard Rock tennis venue in South Florida. Half of the matches in Los Angeles went to third sets, but all eight last week were two-set (to 15 points) sweeps.
The gantlet of marquee matchups the men will run in San Diego was set up by these scenarios:
- U.S. Olympians Miles Partain and Andy Benesh of the 2-2 Dallas Dream defeated Taylor Crabb (hobbled and shoe-wearing) and Taylor Sander of the League-leading 4-0 New York Nitro in the title match of the last of three Heritage Series events in Chicago.
- Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner of the 3-1 Miami Mayhem took down Partain-Benesh in the final of the Manhattan Beach Open, the Wimbledon of beach volleyball.
- U.S. Olympians Chase Budinger and Miles Evans of the 2-2 San Diego Smash made appearances in Heritage Series semifinals at the MBO (falling to Partain-Benesh in three sets) and Chicago (dropping a three-setter to the Taylors).
- The matchup that will be most hotly anticipated, however, will be when Trevor and Chase stand across the net from each other for the first time in a competition since “The Shove” by former NBA player Budinger that sent the older Crabb brother tumbling to the sand four weeks ago in Chicago, a physical escalation of the barking and pointing that had gone on during the match.
The on-court dustup had marinated for a while after Budinger and Evans leapfrogged Trevor and Theo late in the lengthy qualifying process for the USA’s second spot in the Paris Olympics. Bad blood ensued.
Chase said he got physical with Trevor, the AVP’s resident “bad…
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