Volleyball Today: Rough-and-tumble AVP into semis; best of NCAA Saturday

The AVP got more interesting Saturday and the NCAA volleyball slate was full, with another big slate on tap Sunday.

WWE/AVP

Sunday’s AVP semis are set, but not before a double red-card situation for Chase Budinger and Trevor Crabb in Saturday’s AVP Chicago Open:

Just another day on the beach. Here are Sunday’s matchups:

Fourth-seeded Budinger and Miles Evans vs. third-seeded Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander and ninth-seeded Tim Bomgren and Troy Field vs. second-seeded Andy Benesh and Miles Partain.

On the women’s side, top-seeded Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss play second-seeded Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes in a battle of USA Olympians, and sixth-seeded Rodriguez (a teammate of Kloth and Nuss when they were at LSU) vs. third-seeded  Canadian Olympians Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson.

In the red-card match, Budinger and Evans beat Crabb and Theo Brunner 19-21, 22-20, 15-12 to send them to the contenders bracket. They were bounced by Bomgren-Field 21-23, 24-22, 15-12.

Click here for the AVP brackets for all the Saturday results: https://avp.com/brackets/  

The semifinals will be streamed on BallyLIVE and the finals shows on CW.

NCAA women

It’s a big day here in Milwaukee, where No. 1 Texas, the two-time defending champion, plays No. 3 Wisconsin at 11:30 a.m. Central on Fox and then No. 18 Minnesota plays No. 5 Stanford at 2 p.m. on FS1. 

The best play the best in NCAA volleyball, unlike, say, college football. To wit: No. 2 Ohio State 52, Akron 6; No. 4 Texas 52, Colorado State 0; No. 5 Alabama 63, Western Kentucky 0; No. 6 Ole Miss 76, Furman 0; No. 15 Tennessee 69, Chattanooga 3. 

Puh-leeze.

After a couple hundred matches each of the past two days, things slow down in NCAA volleyball Sunday, but there are still quite a few matches, including, in no particular order:

Georgia vs. Florida State
Tennessee vs. Louisville
Penn State vs. Temple
UC Davis vs. Purdue
Florida vs. Michigan State 

Here are some of the key results and top performances from Saturday:

The Power 4

Cal, now of the ACC, beat San Francisco in five as Maggie Li had 24 kills, five digs and four blocks, one solo. USF’s Astrid Puig had 24 kills. Cal then swept Portland State to improve to 3-0 and Li had 15 more kills, hit .565 and had an assist, an ace, five digs and a solo block and a block assist … Florida State hit .324 in a sweep of UC Santa Barbara and Arkansas transfer Taylor Head had 15 kills, an assist, three aces, seven digs and a block … Boston College hit .385 in a sweep of Iona … Miami hit .417 in a sweep of Colorado. Grace Lopez had 12 kills, hit .450, and had two assists, 11 digs, a solo block and a block assist, and eight of her team’s 11 aces … No. 4 Pitt hit .351 and swept Long Beach State …

In the Big 12, Houston beat Washington State in four as Miami transter Angela Grieve had 17 kills, eight digs and a block … Toyosi Onabanjo had 22 kills with two errors in 27 attacks and five blocks as No. 13 Kansas beat Duke in four … Kansas State, which the night before gave host Purdue all it could handle, got knocked off in five by the Big West’s UC Davis, which hit .147 … Iowa State, getting votes in the AVCA poll, was beaten in five by UNLV … 

Two Big Ten teams sustained five-set losses as Maryland fell to New Hampshire and Northwestern lost to Pacific … Rylee Rader had 14 kills with one error in 21 swings as Ohio State beat Northern Iowa in four. Rader had an ace, two digs and four blocks … Avry Tatum had 18 kills and hit .484 for Indiana in a five-set win over Wichita State … Purdue hit .371 in a sweep of UMBC. Eva Hudson had 15 kills with one error in 30 attacks to go with eight digs and two blocks … No. 2 Nebraska beat TCU, which is getting votes, in four. Harper Murray had 20 kills, hit .302, and had an ace, six digs and three blocks, two solo … Ohio State and Dayton couldn’t finish their match at Dayton. Click here for the sloppy details.

In the SEC, No. 9 Kentucky beat Western Kentucky — the last team out in the 25-team AVCA poll — in four. Brookly DeLeye had 25 kills for the Wildcats, hitting .460, to go with an assist, two aces, nine digs and a block. Earlier WKU swept Northern Kentucky …

Logan Lednicky had 19 kills for Texas A&M and hit .424 in a four-set win over McNeese to go with an assist, an ace, five digs and two blocks … Georgia hit .350 in a sweep of South Florida. Sophie Fisher had 15 kills with three errors in 22 swings, two aces, three digs and three blocks … Auburn is 3-0 after beating Wofford in four … Mississippi State beat UAB in four, but UAB’s Jorda Crook had 24 kills, hit .571 and had an ace, three digs and three blocks, one solo … Florida beat Northern Colorado in four … And how about LSU, which is living life a little too close to the edge this early season. The Tigers had to pull a reverse sweep to beat New Hampshire on Friday, then beat Maryland in four and Saturday lost to Troy 25-21, 18-25, 8-25, 25-16, 25-23. Troy’s Tori Hester had 24 kills, an ace, 12 digs and four blocks, two solo.

Lines of the day

CSUN beat San Diego State in five and Amaris Smith had 29 kills with four errors in 57 attacks to hit .439 and had an assist, nine digs and a block. But give a nod to Stetson’s Anabelle Standish, who had 27 kills in a five-set win over Bethune-Cookman to go with an assist, an ace, nine digs and five blocks, one solo, Oklahoma’s Alexis Shelton had 25 kills in a four-set win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. She hit .500 and had nine digs and four blocks, one solo. And, as noted, Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye had 25 kills against WKU.

Around the nation

No. 12 Creighton hit .358 and swept Missouri and Ava Martin had 12 kills with no errors in 30 attacks … Towson is 3-0 after beating Lehigh in five. Ava Nakai had 19 kills and hit .317 to go with three blocks …

Temple of the American Athletic Conference improved to 3-9 with a sweep of FDU. The Owls, who hit .333, got 12 kills from Sydney Jones, who had one error in 18 swings, and 10 from Christiana Greene, who had one error in 11 attacks to hit .818 … Later, Rider beat FDU in five behind 23 kills from Paige Giehtbrock, who had four aces, 12 digs and a block … Also in the AAC, Rice hit .386 in a sweep of Texas State … 

Dayton of the A-10 hit .370 in a sweep of FIU. Lexie Almodovar had 13 kills, hit .379, and had an ace, 11 digs and a block … Purdue Fort Wayne beat Holy Cross in five as Hungarian Panna Ratkai, the 2023 Horizon freshman of the year, had 24 kills, two aces, 12 digs and a block … Florida Atlantic hit .385 in its win over Ball State that left both teams 2-1 … Ohio beat App State in five and Anna Kharchynska had 19 kills, hit .341, and had two digs and six blocks, one solo. But Ohio State was later swept by Wright State, which improved to 3-0 … Louisiana beat Murray State — which got 24 kills from Ellie Vogel — in five. ULL libero Mio Yamamoto had 23 digs and seven assists … 

San Jose State beat Cal State Fullerton in five behind 25 kills by Blaire Fleming, who hit .513 and had two aces, five digs and four blocks. She had a total of 54 kills in her first four seasons and had 14 kills Friday in a sweep of Louisiana Tech.