The competition on the men’s side of the AVP Nissan Series was wide open for the first eight events, with five different teams winning titles. This week it has opened up even more. The 2004 AVP Team of the Year is back together again, just in time for the AVP Huntington Open Presented by Bud light. Karch Kiraly and Mike Lambert, winners of three events last season, are back from their five-tournament venture with different partners.

Kiraly and Lambert started out this season with a 6-6 match record together, placing ninth, ninth and seventh in their three events as partners. This was in sharp contrast to their five championship appearances last year when they compiled a 40-11 slate together. So each went his separate way, and although Lambert won the first event on NBC, in Cincinnati, it marked his only podium finish this year.

The all-time winningest player, as Kiraly has 147 career victories, joins forces with the winningest player over the last year-and-a-half, as Lambert has notched five titles since the start of the 2004 season. The duo is bound to put pressure on the other top teams. The top four seeds have combined to win seven of the tournaments this season, but they won’t be anxious to play this seventh-seeded team.

Kiraly / Lambert began the year as the number one seed, a position which they held for the first two events before yielding it to Jake Gibb / Stein Metzger for the next two tournaments. Since that time, the number one billing has alternated between Gibb Metzger and Dax Holdren / Jeff Nygaard, who have earned the unwanted top seed this week.

While some may consider it an honor to be seeded first, the men’s teams have been doing what they can to avoid it, such as finishing seventh, ninth, even 17th, in order to get a different seed. The reason why is that in double-elimination events, no number one seed has won since the 2003 season opener, making 25 tournaments in a row to date. Only five times during that stretch has the number one seed even made it to the championship match.

In that same time period, there have been only three tournaments which Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh have entered but not won. They enter Huntington Beach having won five straight titles on the AVP and FIVB Tours combined. This season, May-Treanor / Walsh have lost two matches overall, both coming to Rachel Wacholder / Elaine Youngs. The first time cost them a title, in Cincinnati, while the latest one happened in a grand slam event in Paris, but they managed to fight back through the contender’s bracket, defeating Wacholder / Youngs in a rematch, and won another title.

Those two teams have played in the championship match in five of the eight tournaments so far. In the last three events, those duos have been undefeated going into the finals, meaning no other teams have been able to beat either one of them since San Diego two months ago.

While May-Treanor / Walsh have lost just one match on the AVP Tour this season, which is ahead of last year’s record (44-1 compared to 44-3 last season), the duo has been increasingly challenged on the court by teams. The last two events, in Belmar and Hermosa Beach, the number eight seeds have won the first game against May-Treanor / Walsh in the third round, marking the first times in their AVP history that they have lost a game prior to the winner’s bracket semifinals.

The number three seeds, Jen Kessy / Holly McPeak, enter Huntington Beach happy that they don’t have to go through the qualifier. In last week’s FIVB grand slam event in Austria, after playing in the qualifier they drew May-Treanor / Walsh in the first round. After losing that match, they won four straight before losing in the seventh place match. That gave them eight matches in the three days.

The first time McPeak played a professional tournament in Huntington Beach was in 1989, and her 17th-place finish remains as her worst domestic placing in her career. Since that time, she has been in the Final Four in all seven of her Huntington Beach events, including winning four times with three different partners.

The fourth seeds, Tyra Turner / Makare Wilson, are coming off their career best finish after advancing to the semifinals in Hermosa Beach. They are hitting their stride as in the last six tournaments they have not lost a single match to a team seeded below them.

The sand will be the normal deep California sand, but the temperatures are expected to be 10-15 degrees cooler than the conditions in Hermosa Beach last month. That should ease the minds of the men’s players, who will face a two-day tournament as their finals will be broadcast live on NBC at 4:30 pm (ET) on Saturday. The women’s championship match will be shown live on NBC at 4:30 pm (ET) on Sunday, making their tournament a three-day affair.

The key, especially for the men, will be to avoid the contender’s bracket. Playing just in the winner’s bracket, a team could play three matches each day, including the finals. But an early loss could mean having to play five matches on Saturday and four on Sunday, a considerable amount given that the tournament lasts for only about 16 hours of actual playing time.