It may have been senior night at the Wooden Center for No. 6 UCLA, but it was Hawaii’s seniors celebrating the most at the end of 2 hours and 26 minutes on Saturday. Rainbow Warriors senior setter Jennings Franciskovic turned in a near triple-double, senior hitter Kupono Fey shared team-high honors with 11 kills and senior middle Hendrik Mol added six blocks, six kills and three aces as No. 4 Hawaii concluded the regular season with a 41-39, 25-23, 18-25, 25-22 victory over the Bruins (17-9, 10-8).
Hawaii (24-4, 14-4), seeded third in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation volleyball tournament, will host sixth-seeded Pepperdine on Saturday at the Stan Sheriff Center. The Waves (10-11, 8-10) couldn’t hold on at UC Irvine on Saturday, falling 27-29, 25-19, 25-18, 21-25, 17-15 as the Anteaters improved to 8-0 in five-set matches.
“Pepperdine’s a talented team,” Wade said. “I’m sure they’re a lot better now than when we played them.”
In Saturday’s other quarterfinals, top-seeded Long Beach State (24-3, 16-2) meets No. 8 USC (14-13, 8-10), No. 2 seed Brigham Young (23-3, 16-2) hosts No. 7 Stanford (13-12, 8-10) and No. 4 UCI (19-6, 13-5) faces No. 5 UCLA. The highest remaining seed after the quarterfinals will host the MPSF semifinals April 20 and final April 22.
Franciskovic finished with 34 assists, 11 digs and nine blocks. Fey added his first double-double of the season with 10 digs as the Warriors defeated the Bruins for the fifth consecutive time in Los Angeles dating back to 2013
Freshman opposite Rado Parapunov, making just his fifth start, tied Fey with 11 kills and had two of the Warriors’ seven aces. Libero Larry Tuileta had 15 of the team’s 51 digs.
Hawaii coach Charlie Wade said he decided to go with Parapunov over sophomore Stijn van Tilburg at opposite to give Parapunov some in-game court time. The Bulgarian national had played sparingly while van Tilburg was averaging a team-best 4.32 kills per set with 19 matches of 10 or more kills.
“We thought we’d change it up,” Wade said. “Rado’s a really good player. He served really good all weekend and tonight he got them out of system when he came back in Set 4.”
Hawaii finished with a season-high 17 blocks. Freshman middle Patrick Gasman was in on seven.
Jake Arnitz led UCLA with 14 kills and Eric Sprague had 11. Michael Fisher (Hawaii Baptist) added 10 kills, all coming in the marathon Set 1 that lasted 49 minutes.
The Warriors held off 12 set points and won it on their fifth set point as Mol put down an overpass. The Bruins had 15 of their 31 service errors in Set 1,
UCLA handily won Set 3, but the teams had another battle in Set 4. Hawaii took the lead for good at 23-21 when Fey and Mol teamed for a block and, at 24-22, van Tilburg and Mol blocked UCLA sophomore setter Micah Ma’a (Punahou) to end it.
