FROM 12 to 10 teams, a brand new format and a totally different landscape await the Premier Volleyball League (PVL) when it closes the season with the All-Filipino Conference (AFC) unfurling on Saturday.
With the defending champion Petro Gazz out on an indefinite leave and Chery Tiggo leaving, it can now be as much as the remaining clubs to battle it out for the largest, hardest and most prestigious conference of all of it — the AFC.
Nxled, after absorbing the majority of that Angels franchise that won all of it on this same conference a 12 months ago, needs to be considered one of the title favorites together with powerhouse teams like 10-time champion Creamline and PLDT, last 12 months’s PVL on Tour and Invitational titlist.
The Chameleons will parade a vastly improved roster of Brooke Van Sickle, MJ Phillips, Myla Pablo, Jonah Sabete, Jules Tolentino and Bang Pineda from Petro Gazz, Aby Maraño from Chery Tiggo and Aduke Ogunsanya from Choco Mucho.
“It would be an excellent problem,” said Nxled coach Ettore Guidetti of the team lineup logjam.
For the Cool Smashers, they needs to be strong candidates to reclaim the title they last won two years ago especially now that Jia de Guzman is back after a three-year absence together with one other returnee in Bernadeth Pons.
Ms. De Guzman was in Japan and was with Alas Pilipinas during her prolonged absence while Ms. Pons was with the beach volley team that snared the gold in last December’s Thailand SEA Games.
“Very excited with how much the PVL has modified and I might really expect that challenge,” said Ms. De Guzman.
For the High Speed Hitters, they’ve decided to maintain the core that won them two crowns a season back and picked only one in middle blocker Seth Rodriguez, who will momentarily fill the vacuum left by Dell Palomata, who will probably be in another country at the very least for a bit of over a month.
“We’re counting on our chemistry,” said PLDT Manager Bajjie del Rosario.
Choco Mucho needs to be one other team to observe after acquiring possibly the largest free agent out there in Eya Laure and getting back Sisi Rondina, who, like Ms. Pons, was a part of that golden squad in Thailand.
Teams like Farm Fresh, ZUS Coffee, Galeries Tower also made a free agent splash and needs to be contenders too.
Akari and Cignal, like PLDT, have also kept their core and needs to be somewhere up there within the standings.
The league opens on Saturday on the Filoil Arena with Galeries Tower battling Cignal at 4 p.m. and Akari tackling Choco Mucho at 6:30 p.m.
Under the brand new system, a team that sweeps the one round-robin eliminations earns an outright berth within the semifinals.
If not, the highest 4 squads will clash within the Qualifying Round knockout matches, with the winners advancing to the subsequent round. The losing teams, meanwhile, will not be immediately eliminated.
As an alternative, they drop into the newly introduced Play-In Stepladder phase — one other first for the league — where teams ranked fifth to 10th get a second likelihood to remain alive.
This Play-In format injects an added layer of drama and unpredictability, ensuring that no game is meaningless and that late surges can still rewrite a team’s destiny. Rankings throughout the eliminations and beyond will probably be determined using the FIVB Team Classification System, which accounts for wins, set ratio, and points ratio, reinforcing fairness and consistency.
The semis will probably be contested in a single round-robin format, again using the FIVB system to rank the teams. From there, the highest two will battle for the championship in a best-of-three Finals series on the Araneta Coliseum, with the organizing Sports Vision targeting an April 28 conclusion.
PVL Notes: The Philippine National Volleyball Federation, with the assistance of the Philippine Sports Commission and Philippine Olympic Committee, will host Week 2 of the Women’s Volleyball Nations League from June 17 to 21 that could have Japan, Italy, the US, Serbia, Dominican Republic and Czechia. — Joey Villar