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Kloth/Nuss Win Pool B With Come-From-Behind Victory in Paris
8/1/2024 5:10:00 PM | Volleyball
Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss advance to Round of 16 with a 2-1 win
PARIS, France -- Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss posted a victory to close out play in Pool B with a come-from-behind 2-1 win over China's Xue Chen and Xia Xinyi on Thursday evening at Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris. The match endured a 66-minute rain delay in the third set with Kloth/Nuss leading 3-2.
Scores of the match in favor of Team TKN were 15-21, 21-16, 15-12.
As the Pool B champion, Kloth and Nuss have now advanced to the Round of 16, with brackets and match times to be determined after pool play concludes on Friday. Once the field is trimmed to 16, the rest of the tournament will be single-elimination other than the bronze medal match between semifinal losers.
China handed the United States its first set loss of the tournament with a 21-15 triumph in the opener. China led 11-8, then used a 5-1 run to take even more command. Kloth had seven kills and Nuss added two more, but the Chinese pair was too much and notched 16 kills on 24 swings.
The Americans bounced back to even the match, winning the second set 21-16. Team TKN took their first lead of the evening at 4-3 and maintained that lead the rest of the set to pick up a 21-16 victory. Kloth had seven kills in a dozen swings during the second frame while adding a pair of blocks.
Kloth and Nuss were off to a 3-2 lead before play was suspended due to lightning in the area at 10:49 p.m. Paris time. After play resumed five minutes shy of midnight in the City of Lights, the US team fell behind 9-8 before four consecutive points helped the provide a slim 12-9 advantage. Kloth finished with 21 kills in 37 swings, hitting .514 while also adding a pair of blocks. Nuss had a double-double with 14 kills and 11 digs on .440 hitting.
Xue had a match-high 26 kills for China, hitting .458 in 48 swings. Xia ended with 13 kills. Both women served one ace.
Ranked second in the world, Kloth and Nuss are making their Olympic debuts. This was the fourth Olympic appearance for Xue, which includes a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while Xia participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Xue and Xia are ranked 11th in the latest FIVB Beach Volleyball World Rankings and had beaten Team TKN last November the first time the teams met before TKN evened the series in May.
Kloth is the seventh former Creighton student-athlete to appear in an Olympics, and first female. Along with Duncan McGuire of the U.S. Olympic Men's Soccer team, Kloth gives Creighton two competitors at the same Olympics for the first time since 1936, when Willard Schmidt (Basketball) and Carl Vincequerra (Boxing) did so. Other previous Bluejay Olympians include Scott Servais (1988 Baseball), Chad McConnell (1992 Baseball) and Gregory Echenique (2016 Basketball for Venezuela). Schmidt and Servais are the only two Bluejays to earn a medal, with each man taking home a gold medal.
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton from 2015-18, where she was a two-time AVCA Honorable Mention All-American and MVP of the 2017 BIG EAST Tournament. She remains fourth in program history with 1,427 career kills. The Sioux Falls, S.D. native was just as accomplished in the classroom, where the Finance major was named BIG EAST Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and won the BIG EAST Institutional Female Scholar-Athlete Award, BIG EAST Sport Excellence Award and BIG EAST Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award in addition to being a College Sports Communicators Third Team Academic All-American. After earning her undergraduate degree at Creighton in the fall of 2018, Kloth transferred to LSU where she began playing beach volleyball for the first time. After going 14-0 in the COVID-abbreviated spring of 2020, she paired with Nuss for the 2021 season as the duo went 36-0 and was named National Pair of the Year by the AVCA and Volleyball Magazine.
The competition formula for beach volleyball at the Paris Games features 24 teams split into six pools. The first round of the tournament will be completed after teams face each of their three pool opponents once. At the end of pool play, the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the two best-ranked third-placed teams will qualify directly to the Round of 16, occupying 14 of the 16 spots available. The remaining four third-placed teams will play a "lucky loser" round, composed of two matches, from where the last two teams to play in the Round of 16 will emerge. Starting at this round and continuing through the quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches, the men's and women's tournaments will progress in a single-elimination format.
Scores of the match in favor of Team TKN were 15-21, 21-16, 15-12.
As the Pool B champion, Kloth and Nuss have now advanced to the Round of 16, with brackets and match times to be determined after pool play concludes on Friday. Once the field is trimmed to 16, the rest of the tournament will be single-elimination other than the bronze medal match between semifinal losers.
China handed the United States its first set loss of the tournament with a 21-15 triumph in the opener. China led 11-8, then used a 5-1 run to take even more command. Kloth had seven kills and Nuss added two more, but the Chinese pair was too much and notched 16 kills on 24 swings.
The Americans bounced back to even the match, winning the second set 21-16. Team TKN took their first lead of the evening at 4-3 and maintained that lead the rest of the set to pick up a 21-16 victory. Kloth had seven kills in a dozen swings during the second frame while adding a pair of blocks.
Kloth and Nuss were off to a 3-2 lead before play was suspended due to lightning in the area at 10:49 p.m. Paris time. After play resumed five minutes shy of midnight in the City of Lights, the US team fell behind 9-8 before four consecutive points helped the provide a slim 12-9 advantage. Kloth finished with 21 kills in 37 swings, hitting .514 while also adding a pair of blocks. Nuss had a double-double with 14 kills and 11 digs on .440 hitting.
Xue had a match-high 26 kills for China, hitting .458 in 48 swings. Xia ended with 13 kills. Both women served one ace.
Ranked second in the world, Kloth and Nuss are making their Olympic debuts. This was the fourth Olympic appearance for Xue, which includes a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while Xia participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Xue and Xia are ranked 11th in the latest FIVB Beach Volleyball World Rankings and had beaten Team TKN last November the first time the teams met before TKN evened the series in May.
Kloth is the seventh former Creighton student-athlete to appear in an Olympics, and first female. Along with Duncan McGuire of the U.S. Olympic Men's Soccer team, Kloth gives Creighton two competitors at the same Olympics for the first time since 1936, when Willard Schmidt (Basketball) and Carl Vincequerra (Boxing) did so. Other previous Bluejay Olympians include Scott Servais (1988 Baseball), Chad McConnell (1992 Baseball) and Gregory Echenique (2016 Basketball for Venezuela). Schmidt and Servais are the only two Bluejays to earn a medal, with each man taking home a gold medal.
Kloth played indoor volleyball at Creighton from 2015-18, where she was a two-time AVCA Honorable Mention All-American and MVP of the 2017 BIG EAST Tournament. She remains fourth in program history with 1,427 career kills. The Sioux Falls, S.D. native was just as accomplished in the classroom, where the Finance major was named BIG EAST Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year and won the BIG EAST Institutional Female Scholar-Athlete Award, BIG EAST Sport Excellence Award and BIG EAST Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award in addition to being a College Sports Communicators Third Team Academic All-American. After earning her undergraduate degree at Creighton in the fall of 2018, Kloth transferred to LSU where she began playing beach volleyball for the first time. After going 14-0 in the COVID-abbreviated spring of 2020, she paired with Nuss for the 2021 season as the duo went 36-0 and was named National Pair of the Year by the AVCA and Volleyball Magazine.
The competition formula for beach volleyball at the Paris Games features 24 teams split into six pools. The first round of the tournament will be completed after teams face each of their three pool opponents once. At the end of pool play, the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the two best-ranked third-placed teams will qualify directly to the Round of 16, occupying 14 of the 16 spots available. The remaining four third-placed teams will play a "lucky loser" round, composed of two matches, from where the last two teams to play in the Round of 16 will emerge. Starting at this round and continuing through the quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches, the men's and women's tournaments will progress in a single-elimination format.
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