No. 2 seed Warriors placed directly into the NCAA semifinals By Jason Kaneshiro
4/24/23, Honolulu Star-Advertiser
DENIS POROY / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-ADVERTISER
UH’s Chaz Galloway soared over the block of UC Irvine’s Joe Karlous during Saturday’s Big West Men’s Volleyball Championship in Irvine, Calif.
IRVINE, Calif. >> When the University of Hawaii men’s volleyball team headed back to Honolulu on Sunday morning, the Rainbow Warriors knew they would have a cross-country trek coming up next week.
Less certain was the length of the path awaiting them in Fairfax, Va., in a quest for a third straight national championship.
A day after claiming a second consecutive Big West tournament championship, the Warriors were awarded the second seed in the National Collegiate Men’s Volleyball Championship and a spot in the semifinals of the seven-team bracket.
Hawaii (28-2), the two-time defending national champion, opens the program’s ninth NCAA Tournament appearance on May 4 at George Mason’s EagleBank Arena. The Warriors will face the winner of a second-round match between Penn State and the survivor of the April 30 opening-round matchup of Ohio State and King (Tenn.).
UH’s semifinal match is set for 1:30 p.m. The semifinals will be streamed on NCAA.com with the May 6 championship match to be televised on ESPN2.
The No. 1 seed in the NCAA bracket went to Mountain Pacific Sports Federation champion UCLA (29-2), which topped the NCAA RPI for much of the season. The NCAA’s second seed and the bye into the semifinals was among the matters of intrigue leading up to Sunday’s selection show.
In the end, UH was granted the No. 2 seed over Penn State, which swept Princeton in the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association final on Saturday.
UH coach Charlie Wade was not surprised that UCLA got the No. 1 nod over the Warriors, even though UH beat the Bruins in the Outrigger Volleyball Invitational on March 11.
“They’ve been playing well and obviously, they’ve um. … I don’t think they’ve lost since we played them. They’re a good team for sure,” Wade said Sunday during an on-campus press conference.
The Nittany Lions (26-3) were second in the NCAA RPI after Saturday’s matches with Hawaii third. Penn State handed the Warriors their first loss of the season in the Outrigger Volleyball Invitational on March 10 at SimpliFi Arena at Stan Sheriff Center and the NCAA bracket sets up a possible rematch in the semifinals.
The Warriors will enter the NCAA Tournament on an 11-match winning streak and have topped the AVCA coaches poll for 15 of 16 weeks of voting. Since being swept by Long Beach State on March 17, UH has dropped just three sets on its way to claiming a share of the Big West’s regular-season title and a securing second-straight conference tournament title.
The loss to the Beach put a jolt in the Warriors.
“It was a painful reminder about the level of engagement — something we talk about a lot. You can’t take any plays off, let alone any nights off, so the guys responded well and not only played at a high level, but practice at a high level every day,” he said.
UH earned the Big West’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament with a four-set win over UC Irvine in Saturday’s final at the Bren Events Center.
“We’ve been in this (tournament) mode now for about a month,” Wade said after the Warriors outlasted the host Anteaters. “We’ve been literally been talking about it virtually every night out. We know the level we have to play at and nothing but winning will be acceptable to us. The guys are really good at locking in and playing at a high level.”
The NCAA Tournament’s two at-large berths went to Long Beach State, which shared the Big West regular-season title with UH, and Grand Canyon of the MPSF. The Beach (20-4) and Antelopes (20-7) meet in a second-round match on May 2 for the right to face UCLA.
With the Warriors not playing until the semifinals on May 4, Wade said the team’s routine will not be “too terribly different than a regular week. We travel like this, we’ll take the Monday off, we’ll get in, practice, and then just kind of have a normal week and instead of playing over the weekend, we’ll have a little bit of rest time.
Wade said the team is looking to leave Monday, “arrive kind of midday Tuesday to live scout the quarterfinal on Tuesday and play that winner.”
The lack of upsets in Saturday’s conference tournament finals benefited Grand Canyon, which had to sweat out the weekend after losing five of its last six matches. Three of those losses came against UCLA, including a sweep in the MPSF semifinals.
Long Beach State, which lost to UH in last year’s NCAA final, also got into the field after being swept by UC Irvine in the Big West semifinals on Friday. The Anteaters closed their season at 18-11 after taking UH to four sets for the second time in two weeks.
“I think this is just another great example to the NCAA that we have too small of a tournament pool,” Beach coach Alan Knipe said after Friday’s loss to UCI. “Because regardless of who’s not going to go, this has happened to all of us at different times, there is going to be a team left out that could win the national championship, and that doesn’t happen in most sports.”
Ohio State (22-9) won the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association’s automatic bid with a four-set win over Ball State on Saturday. King (16-15) edged North Greenville in five sets for the Conference Carolinas title.
“King got hot at the right time and won their league, and same with Ohio State — they beat Penn State, they played maybe a month or so ago — and really played high-level at the end of the season, so they’re playing really well,” Wade said Sunday. “We saw plenty of Penn State, so that’ll be a quality opponent, no matter who we get.”
