LAS VEGAS » Third-ranked Hawaii hopes to walk away from Western Athletic Conference volleyball Wednesday night with 16 years of extraordinary dominance undiminished.

The ride has been great for the ego and a gaudy winning percentage. In 16 seasons, the Rainbow Wahine have won 97 percent of their WAC matches and 12 championships, going into their WAC tournament semifinal match tonight against Fresno State, which defeated Utah State 25-18, 25-19, 25-10 on Monday night.

But every season and most every match have gone far too fast to feed their need for enrichment heading into playoffs.

"It would be nice to get challenged every night," UH coach Dave Shoji concedes. "One thing as a coach you don’t like are situations where you are an overwhelming favorite and shouldn’t lose. The other side is where you never want to be in a position where you can’t win a match.

"We’ve rarely seen the latter, but being the overwhelming favorite night after night after night is not fun. You still have to prepare, focus, motivate your players. It’s not easy to do that every single night for two months."

The Wahine nearly have. They are 268-7 in the WAC, including 34-3 in this tournament with 23 sweeps. They won 132 consecutive matches against WAC opponents from 1998 to 2006, an NCAA record that still stands. If they win their 13th championship Wednesday, it will be their ninth unblemished WAC season. Last year they did not lose a set during the regular season.

They will go into the Big West next season with the country’s longest active regular-season conference winning streak — 55. They came into the WAC with a 19-match streak from the Big West. That reached 53 before BYU beat them in Provo, Utah, in 1998.

Hawaii hasn’t lost to San Jose State since 1993. It has never lost to Fresno State (51-0), Louisiana Tech (21-0) or Idaho (18-0). It has won 17 consecutive regular-season titles going back to its last Big West season.

Funny how a conference that has been so easy for the Wahine to crush could also be the site of one of the closest matches in volleyball history. Way back in the pre-rally-scoring ’90s, before Brigham Young fled the WAC, the teams played the longest recorded match in NCAA history.

After 3 hours and 38 minutes, just down the street at the MGM Grand, Hawaii won on its 13th match point. The Cougars could not converton their three.

Players fell to the floor after 621 swings. A few hundred UH fans waited more than an hour to cheer the Wahine as they left the arena.

They have lost just four WAC matches since — two each to the two Aggies, Utah State and New Mexico State, which ended that relentless 132-match streak.

The last was in last year’s WAC championship against USU, which was also the first WAC team to win in Hawaii, ending a 97-match home streak. Utah State was one of the Wahine’s greatest rivals in the late ’70s, when both teams won national championships.

"Any time you can get the best of a Hawaii team it is a big accomplishment," USU coach Grayson DuBose said. "They are so well prepared and so physical. Coach Shoji has been so consistent for so long. I hope that the Hawaii fans never forget that it is hard to win volleyball matches.

"That win ranks right up there with anything I have done in coaching. Our team believed they could dream big and they went out and did some good things that night. It was a neat thing for our volleyball program and the university in general because there is some great history here with coaches Mary Jo Peppler and Marilyn McCreavy-Nolen winning a national championship in 1978."

UH (26-1) comes into its final WAC week with a 21-match winning streak. It is intent on enhancing its No. 7 RPI and staying home the first two weeks of the NCAA tournament. The Wahine remember last year’s devastating upset all too well.

"Walking into this hotel, into this arena, I had the feeling again of how awful it was walking back to the locker room last year," UH junior Brittany Hewitt said. "I know none of us want to experience that again, especially in the WAC, because we don’t want to take any chances of getting a lower (NCAA) seed. Our next few matches are super important."

This final tournament and Friday’s nonconference match at Cal State Fullerton, of the Big West, are all that remain. The real season — the NCAA tournament essentially starts with Sunday’s bracket announcement. That has been true pretty much for the past 16 years.

Notes

» Hawaii moved up three spots, to third, in this week’s AVCA Coaches’ Top 25, with five No. 1 votes. It is its highest ranking this season.

"Right now it’s a battle of attrition and we’re the ones who haven’t lost, so we keep moving up even though everybody’s playing top-10 teams," said Shoji, who has been ranking his team "around 10." "That’s pretty much who they are losing to — other top-10 teams."

» The inaugural Rainbow Wahine beach volleyball team will debut in March, tentatively opening against Nittaidai and Alabama-Birmingham in Hawaii after indoor exhibitions against those opponents. A trip to a Florida tournament is in the works over spring break, followed by a trip to Los Angeles in April. UH coach Scott Wong is also discussing a fundraising event with Hawaii Pacific that would be played at Waikiki.